


The Sickness in Our Blood

by Kurly_Q



Series: The Sickness In Our Blood [1]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Mutants, Blood and Injury, Character Death, F/F, I will post specific triggers on a chapter by chapter basis if they're not listed here, M/M, Non-binary character, Queerplatonic Relationships, This World is Tough and These Kids Have Powers, Trans Character, Warnings May Change
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-24
Updated: 2015-10-22
Packaged: 2018-04-10 23:34:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 30,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4412255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kurly_Q/pseuds/Kurly_Q
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If you want to survive, you have to hide. The question is, what part of yourself are you willing to give up in order to do it?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Where Two Lies Don't Make A Truth

If there was one thing Sawamura Daichi learned after the Reform, it was that normalcy is a blessing. To be average makes you an attribute. Mediocrity, perfection.

This is public opinion, which is in actuality government opinion, and so it must also be your opinion when in public. Whatever you say or think in privacy is at your own discretion, but in public, not even _you_ belongs to you.

(Although, sometimes, even privacy isn't yours, but you aren’t meant to know that. Those who know are probably already damned, or are the ones doing the damning).

The public belongs to society, and if you're part of society, you have to be normal. Or if you aren’t normal, you must be on the side of normalcy.

 If you are neither, you are an outlier. An obstruction of the perfectly clear data points in a line. You are an abomination unless you are being used for perceived good, and those in the position to determine your use only need to shift the parameters, make this datapoint fit within the constraints of linearity. If that is not possible, that imperfection needs to be struck out.

Daichi doesn’t want to be struck out, and neither does Suga, so it was decided long ago that they would force their way in with all the other data points. Hide behind and between them, just within the constraints. Close enough that one couldn’t be sure if they were anything other than normal.

Daichi and Suga both attend a lesser known university in Reformed Tokyo, where data points ran so thick that they smeared together in an unrecognizable blot. Even if you are an outlier, it is easy to pretend you aren’t if you are smart about it.

And they have been smart for years. They had feigned perfect normalcy throughout middle school and onward through high school, despite a detestable disease stirring in their veins, festering, growing stronger with each passing day.

By the end of high school, Suga was barely able to make it through the day without either himself or someone else in the near vicinity bursting into inexplicable tears, or anger, or laughter, or any other multitude of emotions, leaving him with an incorrigible headache and exhaustion. Daichi had always felt eternally lucky that his affliction does not depend on other people, that it took more effort to bring it out than rein it in.

Now, Daichi and Suga continue their lives of mundane untruth, and it was as good a life as either of them had ever hoped for themselves thus far. They were broke college student with a caffeine addiction, living off of instant ramen, and periodically waking up from where they fall asleep at their desks, papers plastered to their face and drool ruining their notes. Suga had strategically scheduled all of his classes either early in the morning or late in the evening, in the most obscure and low-traffic hours, except for one or two classes just to keep up appearances, just in case someone was looking hard enough to notice. Daichi on the other hand keeps a less solitary schedule, with an average part-time job, and with a boring business major. Usually, they weren’t in the apartment at the same time except in the afternoons.

This evening, however, Daichi finds himself saddled with too much work and not enough time to do it in the span of the average, diurnal human being. As such, he’s been in the library for hours upon hours—so long in fact that Suga had sent him more than a few text messages to ascertain that he hasn’t drowned himself in the bathroom toilet just to put himself out of his misery.

Nonetheless, he manages to get it all done, and stumbles out of the brightly lit, deathly silent library when the moon is high. It had been warmer this week, now that it was transitioning into the spring months, but this late at night, the air had started to turn frigid. He rubs his hands together and runs them quickly over his chilled forearms, cursing himself for getting so excited about the upcoming spring that he hadn’t thought to bring his jacket with him that day. He supposes the air nipping at his arms is good for staving the tiredness that’s just beginning to make his eyes ache. He yawns, a puff of white billowing out from his mouth.

The streets he walks on now are relatively quiet, but they aren’t dark. After the Reform, people were encouraged to be in their homes at the late hours, generous amounts of propaganda about monstrous beings lurking the streets at night made for paranoid parents, and officers stationed every few blocks kept late night partiers at bay. Now the only people that are supposed to be out are the officers, the homeless, over-worked businessmen, and unfortunate university students like Daichi.

Two blocks ahead, Daichi sees one of the officers, clad in their slate-black uniforms—form-fitting suits made of specially manufactured microfibers that wouldn’t burn at scorching degrees, regulated temperature at glacial levels, and couldn’t be cut or torn by anything softer than steel or the force of an oncoming freight train. Their knee-high boots, if you kicked them hard enough, would probably break your foot, and could withstand the weight of an elephant. Each officer had on their person a gun, a tazer, a tranquilizer, and handcuffs modified with much of the same invulnerability as their suits. Many of them had other abilities up their sleeves, but if you found out what they were, it was usually at your loss.

They are meant to be prepared for anything that might cross their paths, and for good reason.

Daichi keeps his gaze straight ahead, adjusting the strap of his bag from where it rests on his shoulder. This façade of nonchalance was something he’d perfected over the years. He keeps his stride at a pace brisk enough for a shivering college student, slow enough for someone with nothing to hide. He nods at the officer’s helmeted face, avoiding the shielded eyes that show only his own reflection. Gun at their hips, at the ready, officers usually remain still.

But tonight, the officers must be looking for someone, or they have a quota to fill, because Daichi hears the officer’s voice beckon—command—him to stop just as he passes. Heart thudding in his ears, he turns, forcing a look of minor annoyance coupled with confusion on his face.

“Can I help you, officer?” he asks, careful to be polite. He’s been told his smile is friendly, but not overly so, the kind that warms the hearts of little grandmothers and belies nothing of his real feelings. He uses it now.

“There has been an order for heightened NORM security in this district, sir. I need to see some identification.”

Their tone is neutral, non-suspicious, and Daichi forces himself to keep a cool head.

Daichi lets out a light sigh as he reaches into his pocket, glancing up cautiously and moving slowly. NORM officers weren’t usually trigger happy, but he isn’t keen on startling an armed person. He pulls out his wallet, sifting through a few cards before withdrawing his University ID card. He hands it to the officer, who takes it and holds it close to their masked face, inspecting. Daichi doesn’t move, tries to keep himself from clenching the strap of his satchel too hard as the NORM officer takes a lengthy time to read over the information. They hand back Daichi’s card, before speaking.

“I see no indication of mutation status. Have you any documentation of your status as Non-inflicted?”

Heart pounding in his ears, Daichi hears himself speak.

“Not with me, sir. The University does testing, though,” he says, hoping he doesn’t sound as anxious as he feels.

“I’m sure they do, sir. However, protocol dictates that I take a small tissue sample in order to perform a street assessment. It’s quick, painless, and routine, I assure you. It will only take a few moments. Then, I’m sure you will be on your way.”

 _A street assessment? That’s new,_ Daichi thinks, followed by a string of curses that he hopes don’t translate onto his expression.

The NORM officer pulls out a small box with a thick stick from their belt, and opens a small tube with sterilized tips. A blood sample, then.

In that moment, Daichi knows he has to get away, or it will all be over. The moment his data is in the NORM database, there will be no place that won’t have him on file, that won’t view him as a threat. And he would most certainly be taking Suga down with him. They would have to run and hide for the rest of their lives.

It is with that thought blazing in his mind, that all logic flies out the proverbial window. There’s a single moment where Daichi considers the consequences of both fight and flight. If he fights, the NORM officer might be able to take him out anyway, and he will most certainly reveal himself in the struggle. That would mean certain detainment, unavoidable sentencing to either imprisonment or to a normalization facility. He was too old to recruit, and he had no desire to join the Organization. His life as he knows it would be over.

Daichi had always been certain he’d rather die than suffer any of those options.

A gloved hand reaches for his arm, and suddenly he isn’t so sure, but momentary panic overrides any sort of logical thought. The NORM officer must see something in his expression, because the respectful reach is suddenly a clawed grasp towards his bicep, and Daichi rips his arm away. Turning on his heel, he makes a mad dash down the street.

The NORM officer shouts at him, commands him to stop, but he’s _so close_ to the corner. If he can just get around it, he could—

And then the ground comes up to meet him—face first. He may have shouted, but everything is reduced to breathlessness and the jarring sense of falling. At first, he isn’t sure what’s happening. All of his muscles fail to respond to him all at once, and any sensation is replaced by pulses of an odd sort of pain.

 _You’ve been hit with a tazer_ , a distant part of his mind supplies.

With his muscles useless, his body lying prone and vulnerable, his body reacts on instinct as the panic roars to the foreground. A burst of wild energy, unfocused, explodes from the pressure building up behind his rib cage, making the air shudder. A window breaks, and the wail of a car alarm blaring into the night causes any dogs in the vicinity to match its pitch. Hopefully, it doesn’t attract more people. Daichi hears the NORM officer cry out, and the shocks coursing through his body suddenly stop.

Gasping, he rips the tazer cords off of him, clumsily trying to get his bearings as adrenaline races through his veins. His hip aches from where the books in his bag dug into the bone when he fell. Something warm dribbles down his chin, dripping down on the sidewalk beneath where he’s bracing himself on his hands and knees. It burns crimson in the streetlights. _Get away get away get away—_

He staggers to his feet, looking back behind him. Several feet away, the NORM officer is propping themself up on their elbow, new urgency in their body language as they realize that they were dealing with a potentially destructive mutant. The officer’s hand flies to the gun on their hip. Daichi’s blood runs cold.

The lamplight blinks out, showering them both in darkness. The car alarm falls deathly silent. The light of the moon glints menacingly off the officer’s armor, but something else occupies Daichi’s attention despite the gun trained on him.

The shadows behind the NORM officer are moving, shivering, rippling across the ground as though they are alive. Inky black creeps from behind the dumpster, beneath the car, from the alleyway nearby, purging into a long, skeletal shape that towers higher than any person Daichi’s ever seen. Its spindly arms are so long that they drag across the ground, where they split from what would be hands into long, needle-point claws.

As though the NORM officer senses that danger, he whirls his head around just as the creature’s eyes, bottomless pits, fall onto their target. The officer makes to turn his gun on the creature; his finger presses on the trigger. The creature is faster.

Its arm lashes out, disarming the officer with one hand and gripping onto the officer’s helmet with the other. Its pitch-black form envelops the officer, sinking into the cracks of their armor to get beneath it and rip it apart. The officer squirms, helpless in the thing’s grasp and Daichi wonders with a sort of dismay if they are dying, but he can’t seem to move from where he stands on the sidewalk with the iron taste of blood on his lips, shivering with both cold and fear.

The officer stops moving, falling limp in the thing’s grip, and it seems to stand there and stare at it’s work in morbid fascination.

Tentatively, and with more than a bit of dread, Daichi feels out with his powers, feels for the NORM officer’s living energy with his own. As much as he resents them, he doesn’t particularly want them to die, and he feels an odd sort of relief when he senses the burn of life still lingering beneath the officer’s skin.

The shadow-creature swats at his probing energy, poking at it in curiosity, and Daichi cringes away from the sensation of _cold_.

“Interesting talent you’ve got there.”

The voice comes directly from behind him, and _close_ , hot breath tickling his neck. After what just happened, it isn’t a wise action.

Daichi isn’t the type to act before he thinks, but he’s still barely aware of what he’s doing until he feels the crunch of cartilage beneath his knuckles and a sharp ache in his wrist from the hasty punch thrown with next-to-zero finesse at the person behind him. He hears the stranger groan before he registers that the person—a man— is bent over at the waist, in front of him now since Daichi had whirled to face his potential adversary.

 Either Daichi hadn’t thrown nearly enough into that punch, or the man is tough enough to remain mostly upright after having his nose broken. He hadn’t even staggered backwards. Even bent over, Daichi can tell that he’s _tall,_ several centimeters taller than him,with wild hair that’s as black as the shadowy figure behind him.

Daichi takes several steps away from the man, conscious of the proximity of the shadow figure, unconsciously putting himself in a fighting stance as the stranger straightens up to almost his full height. He’s a long-limbed, broad silhouette in the empty street, all sharp corners and lazy posture. Dark rivers, darker than normal, Daichi thinks, are running over his tanned skin, and gushing between his long fingers pressed to his nose. His eyes, glowing amber in the dim light, only serve to put the college student even more on edge, glancing rapidly between the shadow figure and the person that’s currently wincing at him through his painfully bloody nose.

“Jesus Fucking _Christ,_ man. Can’t say I’ve ever been thanked quite so forcefully before,” he says, nasally, his voice muffled behind his hand.

Despite the thundering pulse of his heart, the stranger’s voice somehow makes Daichi feel a vague sense of _annoyance_ at the forced air of detachment, like he simply _doesn’t care_ that his nose is now crooked and he had quite possibly saved Daichi’s life. And in more ways than one. Gratitude, however, is the last thing on his mind, because Daichi can see the shadows moving around them, and he knows that this man is far, far from harmless. He could prove to be an even bigger threat than the officer that was now dangling from the clawed grasp of a living shadow.

Mutants and officers alike, Daichi had learned not to trust any of them.  

“Who the hell are you?” he barks, his voice hoarse from what he hopes sounds like anger more than fear.

The long, slouching figure’s shoulders rise briefly in a lazy shrug, hands shoved in pockets. Daichi carefully looks him over, from the leather-clad torso and tattered jeans, to the spiky black hair that stuck up at every odd angle.

“Oh, you know. I’m just a guy. Maybe your knight in shining armor.”

_Where’s that NORM officer’s gun when you need it?_

Despite the easygoingness of his posture, the man’s eyes seem to burn Daichi’s skin with their intensity, the blood on his face seeming not to bother him. It spoke of a life where bleeding was only a minor inconvenience, a common occurrence. The type of guy that NORM officers would love to eliminate from society at the earliest opportunity. _Not_ the type of person Daichi wanted to associate with.

“Right. Just a guy,” Daichi repeats dryly, looking at the shadowy form, which was, disturbingly, creeping closer. Daichi forced himself to stand his ground, not wanting to take the other option and move closer to the stranger. He looks down at the ground, where the shadow figure seems to be linked to the man’s feet.

 “Just a guy with a _creepy shadow_.”

The man chuckles.

“Hey, now. They don’t like to be called creepy. Hurts their feelings.”

Daichi’s eye twitches.

“My apologies. Uh,” he grinds his teeth. Somehow, this is the hardest thing he’s done all night, and the situation is so bizarre that he’s not sure how to go about it, “I should. . . thank you, I guess,” he grounds out, like he’s chewing on pencil lead.

It seems to amuse the other man. They’re standing in the street with no lights, a NORM officer dangling behind them in the grasp of something made of shadows, and Daichi’s got blood drying on his chin from his split lip. His knuckles ache, and he just really wants to get away from this nightmare, pretend it never happened.

“And I should thank you, too. I’ve been thinking about getting a makeover.  I’ll look charming with a crooked nose, don’t you think?”

Daichi _does not feel bad_.

“What are you going to do with him?” Daichi asks, referring to the officer, blatantly ignoring the other man’s snarky reply.

The man looks over Daichi’s shoulder at the officer, like he’d forgotten how they’d gotten in this situation in the first place. Any playfulness that had been lingering behind his expression was gone, features settling for ‘carefully blank’ as his razor-sharp gaze claws over Daichi’s face. A smirk stretches up the corner of his mouth, and his voice seems to drop to a lower pitch when he replies.

“Does it matter?”

Daichi tenses further, clenching his fists around the strap of his bag as he fights the shudder that the man’s words instill. The hair on the back of his neck rises, and he scowls before his eyes can reveal his horror.

“I would think it does. That's a person,” Daichi bites out, crossing his arms and staring the stranger down.

The man throws his head back and _laughs_ , like it was a hilarious joke. Daichi’s lip curls up at the sound.

“So are you, but it's not like they were going to think twice about shooting you.”

Daichi swallows, memory flashing to the barrel of the gun pointed straight at his chest.

“So, what? Are you going to kill them?” he snaps, challenging. The man meets his eyes, and Daichi’s not sure what he sees there, but something in his expression changes. The confidence on that face wavers slightly, flashing with confusion and something like anger.

The taller man suddenly strides forward, startling the college student, but before Daichi can really react the man is already walking past him towards his shadow, which stands as tall and eerily silent as it had since its arrival. The man hums, as though he’s mulling over Daichi’s question.

“Probably am. And you know what? I don’t really care,” the man drawls as he stops in front of where the officer dangles, tilting his head as though observing some abstract painting he can’t quite make sense of, “You and I are lower than dog shit to them, so I’ll return the sentiment if I have to.”

Daichi can only stare, wide-eyed, at the confession, his throat tightening.

It all makes Daichi want to punch him again. His expression twists in outrage, but any words he has die on his tongue when the man throws a grin at him over his shoulder.  Those golden eyes glimmer with pure contempt.

“Yep, that’s me. Mutant monster and menace to mankind. At least I’ve accepted my place in this society,” the grin stretches wider, “So what does that make you?”

Daichi schools his expression into one of stone, not backing away from this man and his twisted ideals.

“I might not know what I am, but I know I’m not a killer,” he replies. They are words that he’s told himself his whole life, when he’s kept awake at night and wonders if there is any truth in the world that he can live with. “We don’t have to be killers. Mutants don’t _have to be killers_.”

There are a few moments where the two just glower at each other, at the precipice of a boundary that neither one is willing to cross. Eventually, the stranger sighs, tipping his head back as though to take a deep breath. Daichi watches him cautiously as he places his hands behind his head and stretches, elbows carving sharp edges against the night sky. He keeps them there as he walks towards the alleyway, followed by the shadow and its victim.

“You’re right. We don’t have to be killers. But _someone_ always has to be. And if _we’re_ not the killers, who do you think is gonna survive?”

The man pauses at the edge of the alleyway.

“But don’t worry. Your secret’s still safe. You can go back to the life you insist on trying to live, or whatever.”

Even if Daichi had an answer to any of that, it wouldn’t have been heard. The man and the shadow enter the alleyway, and disappear into the blackness.

Daichi blinks, the silence ringing in his ears. He looks around, making sure no one had been watching, but sees no one. With a shuddering breath, Daichi finds it within himself to turn, and continue walking down the sidewalk, leaving the scene behind him.

His mouth aches.

 

 


	2. When Feelings Pack a Punch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jumping out of windows is ill-advised.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: This chapter contains mentions of religion. Specifically, Christianity. I do not intend to promote, discredit, or offend religion of any kind, and it is mentioned purely for backstory.

Sugawara Koushi hadn’t always been a morning person.

There had once been days where he had to set several alarms just to wake up in time to get ready for school, when it would have taken nothing short of a crow bar to pry him away from his pillow.

Those days were long gone, fading at some point during middle school. It was something that had been born out of necessity, really. There wasn’t a person alive that didn’t need to feel alone with their own thoughts and feelings at some point in the day. The predicament was, with Suga, that being alone with his own feelings is something close to impossible.

Honestly, he can’t remember what that feels like, to feel his emotions—only his. And if he were honest, he would tell you that he isn’t sure if he’d _ever_ been alone with his emotions. The concept, it seems, is almost foreign. He can’t imagine it.

But he’s always striving for it. In a city like Reformed Tokyo, solitude is a rarity, and Suga spent probably too much time trying to seek it out. It’s funny. He likes people, likes talking to people and being involved in a group, laughing and smiling together, and yet people are also his worst nightmare. It’s hard to be around people, when people sort of make you want to pull out your own brain matter through your nostrils after a few minutes.

And so, Suga decided to become a morning person. An _early_ morning person. It’s just as well that he does, because a life of shutting yourself away from people is also not an active one, and he’d go stir crazy if he didn’t do _some_ sort of physical activity.

He’d taken up the habit of jogging in the mornings when he became a morning person, also something that used to go against Sugawara Koushi’s Life Plan, which involved not only sleeping in, but consuming hideous amounts of spicy snacks and binge-watching some crappy television series.

There are always wins and losses, Suga reasons to himself as he stumbles into the living room, yawning as he pulls a loose-fitting running shirt over his head. He plops down on the couch, irritably adjusting himself—this sports bra doesn’t quite fit properly, because he _hates_ shopping for them and always settles for however things come from ordering online. He double knots his shoelaces and puts on a thin headband to keep his bangs out of his eyes. He glances at the clock.

It’s 5:15, and the sky is just beginning to turn pink from what Suga can see from his and Daichi’s living room window. He glances at the coffeemaker in consideration for a moment before deciding he should wait until he returns.

It’s bound to be chilly outside, he reasons, and crosses the room the coat rack to search through the multitude of jackets and coats there to find his running jacket. His hands pause, however, when the touch the strap of Daichi’s satchel, which hadn’t been there when he went to bed last night.

That’s right, Daichi had been out very late last night. He’d texted Suga to tell him that he was on his way home from the library, but Suga had fallen asleep before he’d actually made it back to the apartment. Suga frowns. He hates not knowing for certain when his best friend is home, safe and sound, and he really had meant to be awake when he came home.

Quietly, he opens the bedroom door that lies adjacent his. It’s dark, and Suga is just able to make out the form of his friend sprawled haphazardly across the covers. The sound of soft snoring somehow soothes the ball of tension that had settled in his chest, though he wasn’t quite sure why it’d been there in the first place. He stifles a snicker with his hand, wondering if he should take a video of of Daichi snoring for blackmail, but quickly decides to be merciful for once considering the rough night Daichi had probably suffered through. He only snores when he’s particularly stressed or tired.

Feeling lighter than he had since waking up, Suga grabs his jacket, his keys, his headphones, and his cell phone, walking briskly out the door into the crisp morning air.

He makes his way downstairs—it’s both a blessing and a curse that they live on the top floor. It’s a long trudge up and down, but there’s no one above them to make noise.

He takes his usual route towards the area he typically runs in, walking briskly to keep himself warm and to wake himself up a bit. He only passes two people this early in the morning, but thankfully their emotions are either pleasant or muffled by tiredness, and Suga can deal with that. He knows that in a few hours the street will be filled with stressed, anxious people moving too quickly and caring about nothing but the next destination, the next deadline. Every ache and pain, every negative emotion. Just thinking about it makes him slightly nauseous, so he pushes it from his mind.

At some point in his thinking, he had started jogging. Once he’s aware he’s doing it, he picks up the pace a little, putting his headphones in his ears and turning on a song that’s way too poppy and would probably get himself laughed at if anyone knew he was listening to it. Not that he’d particularly care.

The few people on the street are mundane, maybe a little grumpy, but he doesn’t let that get in the way of his relatively good mood, and focuses on the white puffs of air clouding around his head with each breath. He’s glad he wore his jacket.

 _It’s looking like a good day_ , Suga thinks, optimistically, at about the two kilometer mark, _beautiful sunrise, not a cloud in the sky, no class today, guy climbing out of the third story window_ —

Suga stops short, blinking. He backs up, slowly, to the alleyway he just passed.

He’s looking in between two old apartment complexes, complete with a rusted fire escape that looks like it might support the weight of a malnourished kitten, a dumpster covered in crude graffiti, and, _yep_ , one man attempting to climb out of a third story window.

Suga squints for a moment, and looks around, wondering in equal parts if he’s the only one seeing this and if he should call for help. The man looks nothing like a burglar, with slim-fitting khaki pants that look a bit wrinkled, a turquoise button-down that’s only half-tucked into the pants underneath a black peacoat, and dark shoes.

Carefully, Suga allows his senses to stretch beyond the firm radius that he normally erects around himself, assessing what he could of the man’s intent. He tilts his head as feelings of anxiousness, irritation, concentration, and a bit of embarrassment weave through his body , but no feelings of ill intention. It’s as though the man is trying to make some sort of get-away, but from what? An axe murderer? An angry spouse? No, that’s not it. Both of those would instill a great deal more fear than what this guy was feeling.

Suga quirks an eyebrow when the man gives a soft curse, tongue stuck out in concentration as he tries to find the best way to get down to the second floor window ledge without killing himself. Judging by his height, he is tall enough that the drop from third to second window wouldn’t be all that big, except every time he puts his foot over the ledge, his anxiety spikes to levels only expected of someone with a fairly serious fear of heights. Suga quickly clamps down on his own emotions before he succumbs to the man’s fear, his heart rate already starting to beat faster in tandem. He bites his bottom lip, confused.

So what could possibly make a man with a fear of heights desperate enough to more or less attempt to parkour out of a third-story window? Suga stands there, hand on his chin in thought, until it strikes him like lightning.

_Of course!_

“A clingy one-night stand!”

Sharp panic slices through the air, making Suga grimace, as the man gives a tremendous start, his left hand and foot slipping from their perch. The man lets out something akin to a _squeal_ as his body sprawls towards the ground, landing with a dull thud on the pavement. He thankfully misses the dumpster. It all happens so quickly, and Suga almost considers running away.

“ _Are you_ _okay_?!” he cries, rushing to the fallen man, who rolls over with a groan.

Suga bends over the man, trying to decide what to do, but he’s abruptly left feeling dizzy, disoriented, and oddly like he’s hung-over. He winces at the harsh sensation of having all the wind knocked out of your lungs and the throbbing that accompanies a good hit to the back of the head, suddenly realizing that he’s projecting onto the stranger again. He tries to pull back his senses even more despite the fact that he’d already pulled them away from the man instinctively when he’d started falling.

However, the slip in control reveals to him that the man can’t be hurt too badly—nothing felt broken and the man was exuding more humiliation than anything else. Suga tries to look at the man’s face, but the way he’s sprawled he can’t get a good look.

He tries again.

“Um,” he says, more quietly now, forcing a smile onto his face, “Are you—”

“How didn’t I _see_ you?,” mutters the man, who’s trying to pull himself off the ground.

“Here, let me help you,” Suga says hurriedly, reaching for the man’s forearms without thinking.

The man flinches with his whole body, almost violently slapping Suga’s hands away. Suga looks down at the man’s still-raised, glove-clad hand. Gloved? Suga tries to process that, but he’s preoccupied by a wave of alarm that slams into him full force at this proximity. His powers react on their own, grabbing onto the man’s violent emotions and quelling them into something bearable. The man’s face suddenly turns to him, both confused and agitated, and through the jumbled mess of emotions lurching around through Suga’s endocrine system, the college student registers that the man is _beautiful._ Not a term he usually refers to for attractive men, though this one could easily file into any of the other categories—handsome, cute, _something-out-of-Suga’s-more-obscene-fantasies_. . .  
  
But beautiful seems to fit. He is ideal in a very commercial sense—long-limbed, perfect skin, fashionable hair, nice bone structure,  brown eyes set over high cheek bones—someone that belonged on the front of magazines as some sort of pop idol. And despite the obvious hangover, which means that the man isn’t even _at his best_ , he’d still be capable of reducing people to staring.

 _And oh, nice, Suga, you actually_ are _staring._

But the man is staring back, so one of them should probably speak. Probably the man who had just fallen out of a window and apparently doesn’t like to be touched.

But the man continues to simply watch him, and something about the man’s expression doesn’t match his appearance. Something about the way he’s looking up at him with an expressionless gaze, head slightly cocked. It’s unsettling, and a distant part of Suga’s mind is worried that it’s a sign of concussion.

“Um, hi!” Suga says, unable to take the silence. He smiles in a way that he hopes doesn’t show his unease, “You just fell out of a window!”

Silence. Suga winces internally, but valiantly keeps his smile in place.

“And I would like to apologize, since I think it might have been kind of my fault. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you. _Twice_. I just want to make sure—Are you alright? Can you stand?”

The man’s emotions are oddly still in the subtle embrace of Suga’s own, and with a feeling of dread, Suga wonders if he can _tell_.

He keeps smiling, however, offering a hand for the man to take if he wanted to.

The man’s gaze flicks down to it, and his whole expression changes. Rather alarmingly.

“Ah, so this is my attempted-murderer,” the guy says in a voice several pitches higher than what it had sounded like earlier, lilting in a way that doesn’t match at all with what he’s saying or the situation they’re in. He’s tugging at the sleeve of his coat so that it rests over the edge of the gloves.

Suga somehow manages to smile back at what’s possibly the world’s _fakest_ smile—more fake than a university professor who’s only in it for the research funding.  It’s a struggle to keep on smiling at eyes that are suddenly too-wide, that might even look innocent if they didn’t fall flat just beyond the surface—but Suga wouldn’t have needed to be an empath to tell that it was all in immaculate charade. Sure, the smile suited the man’s celebrity-status looks and would probably fool most people. It gave him an illusion of cheeriness and charisma, but no amount of pretense would be able to hide the jagged feeling Suga senses at his core.

Nonetheless, Suga manages a sheepish laugh, rubbing the back of his head with the hand that he’d been holding out.

“Um, I’m Sugawara, though most people call me Suga. I suppose you’d like to know who made you fall to your almost death. I really am sorry about that.”

The man waved one of his gloved hands in a dismissive way, and gets himself to his feet with a grace that Suga couldn’t take seriously given how the man had awkwardly flailed his way to earth just a few minutes ago.

Suga was right: the man is tall. Suga feels vaguely annoyed at the way he has to look up to met the stranger’s counterfeit smile.

“Suga-chan, then! Now I know who’s going help pay my medical expenses,” the man practically sings.

Suga’s not sure how to react at first, and opts for a nervous chuckle that could pass as humorous if the guy as joking, apologetic if he wasn’t. But the man’s expression gives nothing of his true intentions away.

So, Suga decides to cheat.

 _Ah, so that’s what it is_ , Suga thinks as he takes in the waves of satisfaction begin to roll off of Mr. Fake as he speaks _, he likes to manipulate situations so he’s the one in control._

Though, it’s not like he doesn’t have the charisma to back it up.

From behind the brunette, Suga can see a set of curtains moving, and resists a mischievous grin.

“Oh, are you injured, then? In that case, you should go to a hospital! But that’s so far away! Perhaps you should ask your friend to take you?”

The man blinks, the barest hint of a furrow in his brow revealing his confusion. 

“Friend?”

“I’m assuming you weren’t trying to climb out of your own window?”

The man’s eyes widen in recognition, but the smile still wasn’t cracking. That didn’t matter to Suga, however—the sharp tang of unease radiating from the man was reward enough.

“Ah, there’s no need for—“

“Kawa-kun?!” A voice calls, coming from a pretty young woman whose head was craned out of a window, “What are you doing down there? I was just ab— ** _Did_** **_you jump out of the window?!_** ”

The brunette— _Kawa-kun ?—_ goes completely rigid, from his toes to his hair, and Suga bites his lip to keep from laughing at the apparent distress. It’s understandable though, as Suga takes in the myriad of emotions, fluctuating erratically from furious to enamored to overjoyed to despondent in a way that would have left him lightheaded if he were closer. She was the type of person that Suga would keep a fifty meter radius from at minimum, and not just because he was an empath.

“Oh, no!!” Suga raises an eyebrow as the man makes a sudden staggering motion, and Suga nearly yelps as those gloved hands grip his shoulders as though to brace himself. “My knee, I think it’s dislocated! I must have injured it when I fell _accidentally_ from your window, Miku-chan!”

Suga looks to the woman at the window, Miku-chan, who puts her hand to her mouth in alarm, her eyes glassy with tears of sympathy and compassion and— _oh,_ _you have got to be kidding._

Suga squints in disbelief as Oikawa looks as though he’s about to swoon, tipping his head back and laying  his hand on his forehead in a theatrical display. It’s more than a little ridiculous, but the man could probably do the chicken dance and still look at least a little charming.

“But, don’t worry! This guy has offered to take me to the hospital, haven’t you, Refreshing-kun?”

Suga blinks at the guy like he had grown a second head, even though, honestly, that would probably not surprise him at this point.

“Refreshing-kun?” Suga parrots.

Fingers dug into his shoulder like claws.

“ _Haven’t you, Refreshing-kun_?”

 Suga’s stomach dropped as a wave of pure malevolence bore down on him. The woman in the window couldn’t see, but the man’s copper-brown eyes were half-lidded, sinister with dark intent.

“A-Ah! Yeah, that’s right!” Suga says cheerily, waving at the woman who has just seemed to notice him. The woman’s eyes zero in on him like a bird of prey, unblinking, and a pink blush begins to spread over her cheeks.

Suga starts to feel his neck begin to perspire as her emotion suddenly enclose around him like snapping teeth, and this feeling isn’t anything that was usually associated with human beings—typically it was reserved for inanimate objects, food, or some manga character. _Obsession._

He feels sort of like he’s being suffocated, but the illusion is abruptly broken at the feeling of being forcibly dragged from the alleyway by the stranger, who was now sporting a supremely exaggerated limp.

“Ooooh the _pain,_ the _agony_! We really should be going, but I’ll see you around Miku-chan!” the brunette calls in a voice that’s just a bit too high to be completely carefree, and the women disappears from sight as they round the corner.

Suga blinks, a little taken aback by the turn of events, and looks up at the brunette who looks a little like he’s seen a ghost.

“So,” Suga begins, the amusement at the situation finally catching up with him,, “no second date?”

 _Kawa-kun_ shudders, wincing like he’s smelled something terrible.

“Beauty is a curse, Refreshing-kun,” he grouses as they walk.

To where, Suga isn’t sure, but he’s all too conscious of how the taller is continuing to lean on him with too much of his weight, and he’s _heavy_.

The feeling of the leather-clad hands on his shoulder is an odd one, and Suga can’t help but ponder them. They’re almost the right hue that they could be mistaken for skin if one wasn’t paying attention, and Suga fights away the niggling suspicion in the back of his mind. After all, it’s none of his business.

With conviction, they continue to walk like this, steered by the brunette while Suga becomes half annoyed and half curious about where they’re going—if he had better foresight, the college student might have been a little less inclined to follow the lead of a beautiful, crafty, manipulative, glove-clad man that spends his mornings jumping out of windows after bad one-night stands to who-knows-where, but. . .

It really is boring, always stuck inside that apartment when most people are out living.        

“This isn’t the direction of the hospital,” Suga states as they turn another corner, beginning to feel apprehensive.

At this point in the morning, he would have been close-to-finished with his jog. More people are starting to crowd the sidewalk now, several of them looking at the pair a bit oddly, and it feels like a terrible itch across his skin. He can already feel a dull throb forming behind his forehead and eyes as a thick blanket of emotions begins to saturate the air. Right now, it wasn’t dense enough to become a problem, but Suga knew that within the hour the sensation could become crippling. He tries to stave off the worst of it by clamping onto _Kawa-kun’s_ emotions—sometimes having a focus helped.

The brunette feels just as decidedly uninjured as he did back in the alleyway, and Suga knows that he only is keeping up the farce because he doesn’t _know_ that Suga can tell for certain that it’s a farce. If this is the game that he’s going to play, Suga figures that he has some advantage so long as the other continues to believe that he’s in control.

 _Kawa-kun’s_ emotions remain unperturbed, mischievous and a bit smug, but he gives a pout and a whine of fake-pain when Suga adjusts the weight he’s putting on his shoulders. The unwilling pillar suppresses the urge to roll his eyes and instead fixes his expression into one of concern.

“The hospital is so far away! Of course, I don’t want to take up that much of your time,” the tall brunette says fervently, coupled with a long-suffering sigh, before he continues, “because I am so kind and forgiving!”

Sometimes, being able to tell someone’s true feelings makes it _so_ hard to keep from enacting bodily harm on people.  The only thing keeping Suga from doing so was the fact that, if he wasn’t careful, he’d feel it too.

But revenge will come. _It will._

“Oh, that is very kind of you, even though it was my fault you fell in the first place,” he manages to say with a believable amount of sincerity, mouth twisting downwards and looking apologetically at the other man. From the look that _Kawa-kun_ gives him, taken aback, he supposes that he’s succeeded.

“W-Well, so, instead we’re going to meet a friend of mine who’ll be able to help!” the faux-victim continued, having recovered his mask of charm, “We should be there soon!”

This doesn’t explain to Suga, however, why this guy has deemed it necessary to drag him around all of Reformed Tokyo under the guise of an injured knee, when he could have just told him that he’d been faking it to get rid of an overly emotional and possibly a little insane one-night-stand. It doesn’t help that there’s something wriggling within _Kawa-kun’s_ emotions, something that’s less ‘mischief’ and more like ‘plotting’.

But, he’s an empath, not a mind reader, so he’s at a loss there. He’s just going to have go with it. Suga wonders, though, just how the man knows that his friend is going to be there to meet him.

He doesn’t have much time to really think about it, however, as  they soon come to a rather large shopping square. There are a several boutiques, salons, cafes, and some other obscure stores that Suga can’t quite make out. It’s already got more people than Suga is close to comfortable with, and he swallows back his anxiety and instead focuses on reining in his powers.

There’s a slight tug as the taller man tries to move forward while Suga is still absorbing the new space, and the other raises an eyebrow.

“What, haven’t you ever been here before?”

It’s the first genuine thing that man has said to him, the incredulity Suga senses actually matches his words. Automatically, it makes the man seem more personable, trustworthy—even though that’s the last thing Suga should think of him at this point.

 “Actually, no. I’m always too busy,” he lies with a sheepish chuckle. Oh, how the tables have turned.

“What? You need to get out more, Suga-chan! You might have grey hair like an old man and all but you can’t be older than me! Jeez!” the man exclaim with honest conviction, slightly nagging in a way that reminds him of Daichi telling him the very same thing. It makes the man’s eyes prettier than they already were, his face softening. The effect might not have made him look so much like the picture-boy for _Non-no Magazine_ , but it certainly spelled bad news for Suga.

“S-so I’ve been told,” he responds, a little breathy, maybe a little dazzled—wow, either he’s really just _that_ weak, or he really does need to get out more if all it takes is a pair of pretty eyes to reduce him to this.

There’s a moment where they just look at each other, but his emotions are once again so oddly still that they’re hard to make out. But there is something warm there, and it makes Suga want to smile.

“And this place is a really great date spot!”

The words hang in the air, _Kawa-kun_ blinking as though he wasn’t sure if he’d actually said them. Suga feels the moment the embarrassment sets in, forcing the heat away from his cheeks. He’s thankful they’re already flushed with cold.

And then, ugh, _that_ smile is back. The one that makes Suga want to jab him in the ribs until he can no longer _breathe_ , let alone smile.

“Well, of course I’d know, since I’ve been on so many! Just last week I went on—“

“Oi, idiot! What the hell took you so long?!”

Suga raises an eyebrow at the spike of fear that slices through the brunette, but it somehow doesn’t worry him. It feels too familiar to be true fear, lacking the sharp tang that came with fight-or-flight. His face, however, is tight around the smile that’s plastered there, and Suga is oddly pleased to realize that the man is truly _nervous_.

However, Suga concedes that anyone would be a little nervous at the prospect of a man like _this_ coming at you. He unintentionally leans away from the oncoming storm of  tan skin, black hair, and thickly corded muscle. His dark green eyes seem to blaze in palpable rage, and Suga prepares to choke on it. As he gets even closer, however, Suga’s pleasantly surprised to find that the man isn’t exactly angry. The feeling is more akin to . . . worry?

Figures. It’s always the ones that act tough that are the biggest softies.

 _Wonder if he and Daichi are related,_ Suga thinks, giggling to himself.

“Sorry, sorry, Iwa-chan! I didn’t mean to be late, but, see, I got _injured_! Isn’t it terrible? But Refreshing-kun helped me hobble my way here, all the way here just to meet _you,_ even though you’re so mean to me.”

Suga’s torn on what to exactly to be more amused by, the brunette giving his friend that ridiculous pout, or the latter’s  clear desire to punch him.

Suga thinks it would be well deserved.

“Injured my ass, Shittykawa!” the dark-haired man snarls, fist raising as though to grant Suga’s wish.

The proclaimed Shittykawa, however, yelps and leaps backwards to avoid the blow, causing him to put all of his weight on his supposedly injured knee. Suga feels a wicked sense of glee as he freezes, realizing he’s been caught in his lie. Even though the prickling of his abashment is amusing, Suga isn’t quite satisfied with it. Especially when he can’t sense any remorse.

Suga crosses his arms and stares pointedly at him, pinning home his patented and Daichi-sponsored _Disappointed Mother Stare_. The effect is immediate, the brunette shrinking away like a scolded puppy. It never ceases to amaze him how the Look affects unruly underclassmen and naughty children. He wonders if it’s an empathy thing, but chooses not to look a gift horse in the mouth.

The tallest of the three looks helplessly between his two adversaries, and in a last-ditch effort to retain some of his dignity, proclaims, “Look, it’s been healed! It’s a miracle, Iwa-chan, Refreshing-kun!”

He makes a show out of shaking his newly-rejuvenated leg, and Suga shakes his head with a good-natured sigh. He’s content with the bitter trace of regret permeating the man’s emotions, taking that as its form of apology.

 Besides, it’s always fun to watch them squirm.

“I apologize for him. He’s an idiot,” the tan-skinned man grouses, glaring daggers at the antics of his friend before holding out his hand to Suga in greeting.

His handshake is firm, and Suga’s senses pick up on something soothing, like waves gently crashing against a rocky storm, capable of devastating strength under the wrong circumstances.

“Ah, it’s really okay! It was kind of fun, anyway,” he chuckles, truthfully, “My name is Sugawara, but you call me Suga if you want.”

 “Iwaizumi. And that idiot over there is Oikawa. He probably didn’t tell you his name, because he’s a _shithead_ ,” Iwaizumi says, pointedly.

“ _Mean_ , Iwa-chan!”

“Well, I didn’t really mind that he hadn’t introduced himself, but I have to say Oikawa-san is a much better name than Kawa-kun,” Suga interjects, giving the man in question an ever-so-slightly vengeful smile.

Oikawa cringes when Iwaizumi gives him an incredulous look.

“ _Kawa-kun_? What the hell?”

“It wasn’t me, okay?!” Oikawa groans in his defense, shooting Suga a look that’s both surprised and betrayed. Suga only blinks back at him, innocently.

His newfound enjoyment is short-lived as someone who was feeling particularly stressed and apparently has a bad back comes just a hair too close to Suga, causing their arms to brush. However brief, the contact was enough to throw his powers off-kilter, accidentally opening up to the atmosphere of bustle and tension that was rapidly thickening over the city as it woke.

Something must have changed on his face, because Oikawa’s expression is suddenly weirdly subdued.

“Refreshing-kun?”

The strange nickname pulls Suga slightly out of the sudden vertigo.

But he doesn’t really have time to stick around—he needs to leave, needed to leave about forty-five minutes ago. He’ll be lucky if he can get back to his apartment without a head-splitting migraine plaguing him for the rest of the day.

“It was really nice to meet you two, really. It’s been an exciting morning, but I have to go now!” he states abruptly, the words sounding rushed and forced. He bows, before taking a step back and preparing to all but sprint back to his apartment.

“Suga!”

Suga comes to a halt as a gloved hand encloses around his wrist. He looks over his shoulder in surprise, only to be met by copper-brown irises that make Suga’s insides both flutter and freeze. The smile that’s on his face now is neither the fake one, nor the gentle one, but it reeks of more confidence than anyone should be allowed to have.

“Maybe I’ll see you around again,” is all he says, before letting go of Suga’s wrist. He lets their wrists brush as he does, the only part of Oikawa that’s bare from the neck down, and the touch seems to spark with electricity.

Suga snatches his hand back and swallows, searching Oikawa’s eyes for a moment, not daring to reach out with his senses in this state.

Instead of words, the grey-haired college student opts for a small nod, before he turns again and scurries off into the rapidly thickening mass of people.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

They don’t speak for the first several minutes of their trek.

Gradually, the steady stream of people begins to dwindle as they get further and further towards the city limits, towards the seedier areas that no one could be bothered to police or provide resources for.

“Don’t know if I told you this already, but you look like shit.”

There’s an offended gasp from just behind him.

“How rude, Iwa-chan! You haven’t even said good morning to me, and you’re already insulting me,” comes the predictable complaint. Iwaizumi rolls his eyes.

“Good morning. You look like shit.”

 “Iwa-chan, did you forget your contacts today? I always look pretty,” Oikawa all but sneers back. It’s a familiar pattern with them, this banter, and it works well to quell one another’s nerves that always act up when they traveled like this in daylight.

“There’s an idea, actually. I could probably stand to look at you if I wasn’t wearing them, Shittykawa. Why didn’t you answer my texts last night?”

“Ah, well, I was having such a good time last night, why ruin it with the unnecessary use of technology?”

“So you were drunk.”

“ _No!”_

“Let me revise that. You were _trashed_. Again.”

The only response he gets is a bratty frown, so Iwaizumi continued.

“You got trashed, hooked up with some crazy person like you usually do, and then tricked some innocent guy into believing that you were injured so I didn’t beat the shit out of you on sight. Like _I_ can’t tell if you’re injured, jackass! How would you have even gotten injured, anyway?”

Oikawa crosses his arms as red begins to stain his cheeks. He kicks a can that lay on the sidewalk. Definitely a story Iwaizumi would have to pry out of him later.

“Not telling. Anyway, there’s no way that guy was innocent! He’s too cute, it’s unfair! _No one who is that cute can be trusted_!”

“Do you even hear yourself when you talk?”

“I mean, look at me! I’m cute! And I _definitely_ can’t be trusted!”

“Well, you got part of that right.”

Oikawa sticks his tongue out at him.  
  
“Is that why you tried to extract from him? You realize how uncalled for that is, right? He seemed like a nice guy,” Iwaizumi lectures as they approach the building they were headed towards. Tucked between countless abandoned buildings and run-down stores, it seemed as though there were nothing but rats to keep someone company within it.

Oikawa hums like he’s pretending to listen— even though he always listens. He just doesn’t want to answer. He’s grateful that Iwaizumi doesn’t press the subject, his wrist still tingling from the sensation of Suga’s skin on his—a sensation that he isn’t used to in general. All in all, with such brief contact, there wasn’t much information to be gleaned.

_flashes of burning blouses,_

_eyes flickering across a full classroom from the back corner— don’t look at don’t talk to don’t come_ near _me._

_kind brown eyes set in a round face, steady solid earth._

_empty room, empty apartment, empty streets at sunrise lonely._

_Lonely._

It was all too nonspecific and hazy, information skimmed across the surface of a whirling pool. Random and without much depth, but they were all he had been able to get. How irritating.

He kicks another can, a little harder this time.

The building they approached was blackened and old, tall and simple in design, with large doors that had once been wood but had been reinforced with steel several years ago in a poor attempt at safety. Futile, in the end. Light reflected off of the broken stained glass windows in a myriad of colors. All of the broken windows had been reinforced with steel bars, but these too had been in vain.

There had never been many churches in Tokyo, even before the Reform, but now they were almost nonexistent, having been either burnt or destroyed in the chaos that had been the generation before theirs.

Many people would argue that it was the destruction of the Vatican that ended the reign of religion in countries of prevalent Christianity. But, once the last several wars had ended,  new government systems had been placed, and once peace seemed feasible again, the church had begun to recover.

But then, the mutants began to emerge.

Demons, the remaining active religions called them. Many called them a punishment from God for the evils of man, for the great suffering caused by the wars.

Dangerous, the government called them, inhuman hazards to society and the bringers of the next wars—the result of natural selection and nuclear radiation, come to beat out humanity in a truly Darwinian fashion.

 _Homosapien novus_ , scientists had taken to calling them, as though they hadn’t come from people every bit as human as the rest of them.

Mass hysteria ensued. Military intervention was enacted at varying degrees all over the world. Mutants, out of fear, tried to flee and defend their families, were shot and killed in the streets. Institutions were built—facilities meant to eliminate the threat of mutants from society.

Then came the equal-right activist outcries. Protests. A resurgence of righteousness that the governments, still frail and regaining their power and trust over the people, could not ignore. But then, how to control the dangerous mutants, who had the potential to destroy civilization as they knew it?

New forms of radiation therapy were developed. Institutions called treatment facilities were created for mutants deemed too dangerous to live amongst normal civilians or who could be used for in the interest of Humanity.

A new sector of the government created in the interest of public protection from unstable mutants—the National Organization for the Regulation of Mutants, also known as NORM.

The Reform.

Television screens, news stations, radio stations all relayed the message:

  *          Under the Reform, it is unlawful to purposely or unintentionally perform Enhanced Abilities that are considered a safety hazard to the members of the public, punishable by court-ordered normalization and/or imprisonment.


  *          Those with Enhanced Abilities must register themselves as such through the National Organization for the Regulation of Mutants, punishable by court-ordered normalization and/or imprisonment.


  *          Parents and Legal Guardians of those with Enhanced Abilities must register these individuals as such through the National Organization for the Regulation of Mutants, punishable by court-ordered normalization and/or imprisonment.


  *          Those registered as citizens with Enhanced Abilities must adhere to the guidelines set forth by the National Organization for the Regulation of Mutants, including mandatory use of medications, treatments, and devices (i.e suppressors, sterilizers, normalization therapy, tracking devices, etc), which are determined upon evaluation, punishable by court-ordered normalization and/or imprisonment.


  *          Those with and without Enhanced Abilities that are recruited by the National Organization for the Regulation of Mutants, must comply without resistance, punishable by court-ordered normalization and/or imprisonment.


  *          All Employers have the right to reject job applicants on the basis that their Enhanced Ability may inhibit their performance, without threat of ramifications such as, but not limited to, court-ordered normalization and/or imprisonment.


  *          Employers and public health services are required to report incidents where an individual’s Enhanced Ability may pose a threat to civilians, punishable by court-ordered normalization and/or imprisonment.


  *          All citizens of the Reform must comply with the orders of the National Organization for the Regulation of Mutants’ personnel, punishable by court-ordered normalization and/or imprisonment.



 

NORM officers took to their posts at every corner, slate-black uniforms ominous against city’s unassuming grey, a reminder of the consequences of insubordination, while mutants either ducked their heads and accepted their estrangement, went into hiding, or allowed themselves to be used for NORM’s gain.

 The existence and persecution of mutants were more than the Church’s foundations could bear; it lost most of its remaining followers, and failed to resurface simply due to lack of faith. Churches were now nothing more than distant, bitter memories.

Thus, they were perfect hideouts.

The two long-time friends enter the building and walk through the pews, sunlight filtering in through the bars on the windows as pale rays against charred black and grey interior, dust particles in the air.

There’s a door at the back, behind the once-was alter, and it descends down a flight of stairs into a basement area—all drab concrete, cool and damp.

At the bottom, there is a single large, square room. The back corner is occupied by an enormous mass of wires, monitors, keyboards, and other devices set in a way that seemed haphazardly placed on different shelves and desks odd. In front of the huge structure is a single chair, the back facing Iwaizumi and Oikawa as they enter. There was no perceptible movement, but both could still make out the top of a blond head of hair, roots dark from lack of upkeep, belonging to the only person occupying the room, knees bent up to their chin form their perch on the chair.

Oikawa walks over and spins the chair around to face him. The occupant passively refuses to acknowledge him.

“Yo ho~! How’s Kenma-chan today?”

The blond, Kenma, doesn’t look up from the game currently being played on their beloved vintage Nintendo 3Ds. Their fingers don’t move on any of the buttons, but the character on the screen continued to fight, scoring points.

“Fine,” they reply, ever so talkative, and Oikawa sighs in exasperation, reaching out to ruffle their hair. He gets an irritated flick of golden eyes, and that’s good enough for him for the time being.

“Where the hell is he? He’s the one that called us over here,” Iwaizumi grumbles, eyes scanning the room like he can drag out the perpetrator with sheer force of will.

Kenma shrugs in response.

“The Walking Bedhead better get here soon, or I’m leaving. He’s the one that asked for a favor,” Oikawa huffs, absentmindedly tugging on runaway strands of Kenma’s hair, pinching the strands between his gloved fingers.

Kenma’s left eyebrow twitches in annoyance. Without a word, their eyes flick once to the left, and a small screen blinks to life on one of the dozens of cell phones scattered all over one of the desks. Oikawa watches in amusement as the texting window opens, and a single line of text reading something to effect of “Come, immediately” is abruptly being sent from it with no context.

It’s effective, however, because not a minute later, the shadows begin to slither across the floor, stretching from the walls into a big, murky-black puddle in the center. The edge of it touches Iwaizumi’s feet, and he backs away from it with mild disgruntlement at its coldness.

Three figures rise from the pit, all enveloped in a thin layer of pitch black that quickly melts away from two of the figures. One of them is familiar, tall with unfortunately cut hair and an expression chronically stuck in some variation of a smirk. Behind him stands what seems to be a shadow itself, inhumanly tall and spindly and looking no less intimidating now that it’s daylight than it would in the dark.

The third figure, lying limp in the shadow’s grasp, however, is what causes Oikawa’s face to twist in a murderous glare.

“Absolutely not. Not a chance, Kuroo,” he seethes, crossing his arms across his chest.

The man in question sighs irritably, hand gingerly rubbing at his nose that’s—oh, yes, it’s spectacularly swollen and mottled black and blue, the hue bleeding up into puffy bags beneath his eyes as well. He looks like hell.

“You look like hell,” Oikawa bites out with an acidic grin.

“Don’t I always?” Kuroo quips back without much humor, not appreciating the change in subject, “Now, stop bitching and just do it.”

Oikawa huffs in a manner so haughty it demands a dry look from everyone in the room. Even the damn shadow.

He honestly just can’t _win_ today.

“And just why should I?” he hisses.

“Dude, you owe me for the last favor I did you!” Kuroo retorts, amber eyes glinting.

“Nuh uh! _That_ favor was in return for another favor that you asked me to do!”

“Yeah, and you owed me _that_ favor because of some other favor that I’d done for you!”

“That was Akaashi who did that!”

“ _He works for me, jackass!”_

“Oh? So he does ‘ _favors’_ for you now? How scandalous.”

“Man, you’re gross. Besides, do I need to remind you of all of the other ‘favors’ you and I—”

Kuroo is cut off by a hand grabbing a fistfull of his hair and _pulling_ , causing him to stumble forwards. Iwaizumi’s grip is relentless, uncaring at the taller man’s nasally whines of “Owowow, that fucking _hurts_ , man!” Oikawa is about to laugh vindictively, when another hand grabs the skin of his cheek between its fingers and squeezes _. Hard_.

“ _Ow ow ow, Iwa-chan, owwwwwwwwwwwwww!”_

“ ** _Shut the hell up, both of you, or I swear to the god of this church that I’ll permanently damage your vocal chords!_** ” bellows Iwaizumi, who is far past done with everyone’s bullshit today, and just wants to leave.

Ears ringing, the two grown-men-turned-five-year-olds whimper. Iwaizumi takes a deep, calming breath, counting to ten.

“Kuroo, just sit the fuck down so I can fix your nose, and don’t say another _word_ until I’m done,” he commands in a voice that leaves no room for argument, shoving Kuroo into a sitting position on the floor. He then turns to Oikawa, who doesn’t miss the way that his friend’s tone turns just a touch softer. Oikawa glares at the floor. “Tooru, just  _do it_ so we can get out of here _._ It’s shitty, I get it, but we really _do_ owe them for last time.”

Oikawa is quiet for a moment, contemplating being stubborn for a few moments. But Iwaizumi's steady green gaze eventually gets to him, like always, and his shoulders sag in defeat. His stomach churns, but he refuses to let it show despite the apology he can see in his friend's eyes. 

“Fine, okay, but you so owe me for this,” he mutters, feeling his throat tighten as his gaze falls on the unconscious—dead or dying?—NORM officer.

The shadow watches him expectantly as he approaches, but it doesn’t move as Oikawa stares hard at his reflection in the eye-shield of the officer’s helmet. With a shaky breath, Oikawa tugs off the helmet in a way that may have been too rough to pass for indifference.

He takes a good, long look at the officer’s face, bruised and streaked with blood. It's no one he knows, and he’s glad for that, at least. He only hopes that this officer doesn’t know _him_.

From behind him, he can hear the soft sounds of cartilage molding back into place, soft groans from Kuroo giving voice to his discomfort. Kenma remains silent, and he can’t feel their eyes on him, either. No one’s paying attention to him, and he prefers it that way.

Steeling himself, Oikawa slips off one of his gloves.

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And, to your left, you'll see the train-wreck that will be OiSuga!
> 
> I want to put everyone's respective mutations in the notes as they are revealed or implied in-story, but I think I'll let people guess at them for the time being (｡•̀ᴗ-)✧
> 
> Side note, I was going to upload this in the morning at six a.m right after I'd finished, but I forced myself to wait until later today to edit. Trust me, I did you guys a favor. 
> 
> As always, please let me know what you think-- constructive criticism, questions, and general comments are all welcome!


	3. Because There Are Few Risks Worth Taking

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> None of this is part of their job descriptions.

Tsukishima Kei did not take risks.

He didn’t take risks when he was eight, when he had first understood that he wasn’t quite like the other children. He didn’t in middle school, when students in the grades above and below him began to disappear without warning, just enough people to notice, but not enough to talk about it like it was an abnormality. He didn’t take risks when his parents sat him and his older brother down one night, and asked them if they had any secrets to share with them, their smiles sharp with anxiety. He didn’t when Akiteru was taken away, just like so many other children, and was never heard from again.

He didn’t even take a risk when the only person he had ever been _willing_ to take a risk on had vanished one day, too.

Instead, he graduated with top marks from high school and moved to Reformed Tokyo, far enough away where no one would know him and where his parents wouldn’t be close enough to take the fall if he was discovered. He attends a decent university with an ambitious major in computer engineering—with grades like he had, if he didn’t go for such a major, people would ask questions.

He has a part-time job at a used music and entertainment store—full of CDs, DVDs, video games, and a slew of other ancient devices that could only be sold at a run-down, unpopular store that didn’t even bother with thorough background checks of their employees. That, coupled with a low flow of customers, made the job good enough for Kei, who makes it his habit during his shifts to sit next to the register with headphones on, no music playing, and to watch the endless flow of traffic moving in front of the store.

Today was especially slow. No one’s been in the store in over an hour, and Kei’s not complaining.

His luck would have it, though, that just as he thinks about it, he hears the bell above the shop door jingle. He mutters a half-hearted welcome to the customers, but makes no effort beyond that other than a cursory glance over the two newcomers.

One of them has midnight-black hair, is pretty in a way that would make most anyone do a double take, and wears an expression of intense disinterest—Kei approves, especially when the customer doesn’t even spare him a glance.

The other customer has their body slightly turned away, head bent over so their face is shrouded behind the large hoodie that sags around their frame.  Slightly suspicious looking, but blessedly quiet, and frankly Kei wouldn’t give a damn even if the customer actually did steal something from the store.

Yet, for whatever reason, Kei finds his eyes following this customer as they seem to fixate on the back corner section, looking lost, even as his companion weaves through the aisles as though on a mission. At least he seems to know what he’s looking for.

Kei decides quickly that it’s irritating, how the hooded person indecisively fingers through the same ten CDs in a row. Over and over again, for five straight minutes, seemingly unaware of Kei’s disdainful stare.

It’s so irritating, in fact, that he gets up and walks over to the annoying customer, who doesn’t seem to sense his approach until he’s close enough to be able to make out dark wisps of hair peaking haphazardly from underneath the hood.

“Hey.”

The customer jumps with a small squeak of alarm, and Kei raises an eyebrow in distaste. The person doesn’t turn around completely, but their head turns just enough to the left to indicate that Kei’s been acknowledged, shoulders hunched.

“H-Hello,” the person stammers in response, voice pitched with nervousness that only serves to firther annoy Kei _._ It’s a guy’s voice from what he can tell, but despite his height advantage and the fact that the guy’s face is turned somewhat in his direction, he still can’t make out any part of his face.

Something about that throws Kei off—he blinks, narrows his eyes, wonders if he needs new glasses—it all serves to make his exasperation increase in intensity until his fists are clenching in his pockets.

“Are you looking for something?” he bites out, and even he can tell that his tone is inappropriately sharp to be talking to a customer with. Not that he’s ever been good at the customer service thing.

The guy is practically _shaking_ , and Kei wants to tear the hood off his head, or maybe throttle him a little bit, and he’s not even sure why he’s suddenly so agitated by this stranger.

“Ah, n-no! I-I mean, yes! I mean, I’m j-just. . . looking?” the guy starts out in a strong voice, but seems to wilt under his own words until they are barely more than a whisper.

Kei wants to tell him to shut up, but he is sure that he shouldn’t do _that_ at least. Instead, he decides to passive-aggressively suggest to maybe move around the store a bit more if he was ‘just looking’, so he didn’t look like a damn criminal, but a voice stops him before he can say the words.

“I’m ready to check out,” comes the voice from across an aisle, quiet enough that Kei almost doesn’t hear, and yet he finds his head turning to look before he thinks about it.

He’s almost forgotten the other customer is still here. The raven-haired man stands in front of the cash register, dark eyes boring into Kei’s as he looks back.

His feet are moving before he even realizes it, the hooded figure nearly forgotten. He takes his position behind the register and looks at what he’s selling.

The customer is holding out a disk, holding it towards him, expectant, and Kei’s brow furrows as he takes it in his hands. It has no case, nothing written on it, no indication whatsoever what’s even _on_ it—and Kei’s sure the shop doesn’t have any blank CDs to sell to begin with. Odd.

“I’ll need to check what the disk is, if I’m going to give you a fair price for it,” he drawls, adjusting his glasses as he moves to the computer by the register. It’s an ancient thing that groans to life when he jiggles the mouse. He’s about to open up the CD drive, to put the disk in, when the customer suddenly speaks.

“Stop.”

Kei stops.

He looks up, instantly connecting with obsidian eyes. It’s as though he doesn’t have a _choice_ but to look—his entire focus zeroing on a gaze that appears to hold no emotion, yet demands his absolute attention. His own will is seemingly not enough to force his limbs to move like he wants them to.

What does he even want to do? He wants to put the disk in the computer, or course—wants to see what’s on it. Then, why isn’t he doing that?

 “That’s unnecessary. It’s the same as this CD,” the customer seems to be answering his unspoken questions, holding up a CD for a band that Kei can’t even tear his gaze away enough to read the title of.

Logically, Kei knows that there’s no way to be certain of that just by looking, and yet his mouth seems to have a mind of its own.

“Right,” he says, as though in a dream. He punches in the numbers, six-hundred yen, and holds out his hand to take the cash that’s dumped there. He puts the disk in a bag, and prints the receipt. He couldn’t have done more or less if he tried.

As soon as the bag is handed to the customer, it feels as though some sort of spell is broken. Kei’s vision blurs, nausea curling in his gut with vertigo as his body slumps in sudden fatigue. He is dimly aware that he’s now looking at the back of the man’s head, and can barely hear the soft “Thank you” directed at him as both of the customers slip through the shop door. A soft jingle sounds, and the two are gone, swept into the endless flow of people on the sidewalk.

Kei’s heart is beating oddly slow as his brain begins to piece together what’s just happened.

He’s not stupid. He’s willing to bet that at least one of those two were mutants, one with some sort of powerful hypnotic ability. Why they would want a seemingly blank disk from a run-down store though, Kei could only guess at. Information on someone’s identity, incriminating evidence, intel on some conspiracy that could end life as they all know it—it could be anything.

Legally, he is required to report the incident. A mutant with such a coercive ability falls quite neatly under the category of ‘danger to the public’, but it’s not as though he cares enough about the greater good to bother with such a thing. Those two could have simply stolen that disk from the store, and he would have shrugged and let them go.

Because to report anything to the government was risky for people like him, and Tsukishima Kei did not take risks.

For anything.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

There is a small person passed out in Aisle Three.

Azumane Asahi didn’t read the contract when he was hired, but he is absolutely certain that cleaning this up was not part of his job description.

He walks out of the aisle, rubs his eyes, and slowly—very slowly—peers back around the corner.

Still there.

See, Asahi had just _known_ that moving to Reformed Tokyo would be a bad idea. He just knew this would happen. Well, okay, not this specifically, but things always happened to Asahi. It was just how his life worked.

He should have seen this coming ever since that one time in high school when he had put his hair up during class and the hair tie snapped and wound up hitting the girl behind him in the _eye_ , and then that rumor began to spread about how he had been initiated into a gang and had brought a sling-shot to school to shoot people with to prove his status—but honestly, Asahi couldn’t blame them for thinking like that because the girl’s eye was so _red_ and she had _cried_ , and when Asahi had tried to help her, he had ended up tripping and spilling her pencil pouch all over the floor, stepping on one of her pens—a cute, little, pink pen with a cat head on the end of it. He had shattered it, probably along with all of her dreams and aspirations because now she was probably _blind_ in that eye, and what kind of horrible person _does_ that—hits innocent high school girls in the eye and then breaks their pretty pink pens? Asahi kind of horrible people, that’s who.

This is Karma. This small person lying unconscious and surrounded by cans of beans and bags of rice is his punishment.

And now, he was supposed to figure out what to _do_ with this unexpected punishment at 5:30 in the morning, when he was supposed to be preparing the store to open to the public.

Should he report it? Who should he report it to? Who should he call? The police? No, no --his boss? Absolutely not, maybe he should call the hospital?

Oh, no, what if the guy was _dead_?!

Asahi began to wring his hands in panic.

“The Heimlich! No, no that’s for choking people, isn’t it?! W-What about CPR? Oh, but he’s so small, I’ll probably crush him, and if he isn’t dead already then he’ll _really_ be dead! A-A defibrillator! Do we even own one? How would I use it?! I don’t know how to bury a body! He won’t even have a funeral and his soul will never be at rest and he’ll haunt me oh god, oh—”

“Shu’ the ‘ell up”, the small, not entirely unconscious person moans, mostly incoherent. Asahi jumps, staring at the small person who rolls from their face-down position onto their back before mumbling, “ ‘m tryin’ ta sleeeep.”

Then, the boy—man?—begins to snore.

Not knowing what else to do, and on the verge of a meltdown, Asahi scurries to the old phone in the back office and, with shaking hands, dials one of the few numbers he’s committed to memory. It rings three times, before his friend picks up.

“I swear to god, Asahi, if this is about something else you’ve broken—“

“I need you to come down to the store. T-there’s a person and he’s not dead, and I don’t know what to do?” Asahi whisper-screams with a trembling voice, “ _Please?”_

“. . .  _What?_ ”

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Daichi would think that, considering the week he’s had so far, that the world might see it fit to cut him some slack. Just a little bit.

Clearly, the world had other ideas, made apparent by the fact that he is trudging to his other childhood friend’s workplace at 6:00 in the morning on a _Saturday_.

He didn’t wake Suga, who had been mostly bed-ridden with a migraine since early the previous morning, and when he’s like that, Daichi’s learned that the best thing to do is to get the painkillers, shut the blinds, and remain absolutely silent or else be forcibly subjected to the pain of the migraine as well. And as much as he loved Suga, he really didn’t want to suffer that pain with him if he had the choice.

So, maybe it was a blessing in disguise that Daichi had been called out of the apartment so early in the morning. There was no way he could make noise if he wasn’t even there, and the fewer people in the vicinity, the better off Suga would be.

Well, it _would_ be a blessing, if the alternative situation wasn’t so unbelievably shitty.

“Asahi, _what did you do_?”

The man in question, about a head taller than Daichi and with the personality of a particularly scared, shivering Chihuahua, is nearly whimpering in his distress.

“I swear, he was like this when I showed up! A-and everything was locked up when I came, so I have no idea how he got in!”

Daichi blinks in disbelief at the intruder, who is curently cuddling a bag of rice, snoring louder than he had any right to on the floor of a grocery store.

“And what the hell am I supposed to do with him?”

 “I don’t know! I c-can’t call Ukai-san and I’m pretty sure calling the police would be a bad idea—I mean, t-this place doesn’t even do mutation testing in their background checks! I’ll have to move again. Daichi, what if I have to become a mobster and work underground? I—“

“Asahi. Stop,” Daichi grits out, his tolerance just a bit too short this early in the morning. He can’t think of anything that won’t land them in prison almost immediately, so he opts for the only thing his sleep-deprived brain can come up with, “How about we just wake him up, and ask him what he’s doing here?”

Worst case scenario—the guy is a violent mutant with mental problems and Daichi and Asahi will have landed themselves in Deep Shit. No biggie.  Best case scenario, the guy leaves, and everyone gets to go home happy.

Asahi takes a deep breath, seeming to have calmed himself, and nods nervously.

They decide a broom is the safest thing to use in this situation. Even though Asahi’s arms are longer, Daichi is bolder, so he holds the stick-end of the broom out towards the sleeping intruder. It’s as good a plan as any. Or so Daichi tells himself.

He pokes at the intruder’s left arm. It earns him nothing but a twitch and a half-hearted groan. It takes all of two minutes of this before Daichi scowls, patience worn thin.

With sudden of brashness, Daichi drops the broom and walks over to the sleeping figure. Daichi takes in his entirely black attire—characteristic of someone trying to steal—and a bag attached to his hip. He’s got brown hair with an odd blonde streak in the front, and he’s currently drooling on the floor. Daichi nudges him with his foot.

“Daichi,” Asahi hisses, muscles tense with unease, “I don’t think that’s a good—DAICHI, LOOK OUT!”

Daichi looks up just in time to dodge fire—literal _fire_ being swung at his head. Wide eyed, his gaze follows a trail of flames as he stumbles away from it—no, hang on, that’s an arm. An arm that’s _on_ _fire_ and probably connected to a person.

Asahi is behind him, steadying him before he can topple backwards, and they both take in this second intruder, who had burst from the back storage room like something from the fiery pits of hell.

Hunching over the miraculously still-sleeping figure, is a man—a man who is wearing a suit that is horrifyingly reminiscent of a NORM officer’s uniform, and who is also _entirely engulfed in flames._

Instinctively, Daichi braces himself for a fight even as Asahi takes a step back from the threat,  half-heartedly raising two shaking fists and completely unaccustomed to using them. There is a stare-off for a few seconds, before the stranger is suddenly moving, arms pushing outwards.

The stream of flames that follow seem to be more of a bluff than anything, but that didn’t stop Daichi from retaliating. Both of his hands fly up in front of him, palms outwards as he beckons his energy to push back against the attack. The move lacks both control and finesse, and holds too much power; it pushes both the flaming man and the sleeping intruder backwards with its force. Cans and bottles fall everywhere as they collide with the shelves. Behind him, Asahi was nearly tearing his hear out at the destruction.

The fire-wielder is on his feet in an instant, rage in his eyes and a roar tearing from his throat. He pounces, thrusting his arms behind him and using flames to propel him forward. One fist rises up to throw a punch, engulfed in a blaze that is tinged blue around the edges in its intensity. Daichi has shields up, but they are much too weak. The Human Flame-Thrower smashes through them in an instant, and it was all Daichi could do to throw himself to the floor, the man flying over him and crashing into a display of melons.

Asahi drags Daichi to his feet with a bit too much force, his large body simultaneously pulling them both away from the danger while trying to shield them for it. Daichi thinks it probably looks ridiculous, considering the absolute terror written on Asahi’s face.

For a moment, the flames are entirely gone. The man flails around in the mess of melons with a hiss of pain, nose wrinkling at the odd smoky-sweet smell of the burnt fruits smell permeating the air. Daichi and Asahi brace themselves as the man began to struggle to his feet, the only sound in the store being Daichi and Asahi’s heavy breathing, the squelch of blackened melons beneath clumsy feet, and grunts of exertion as The Hot Tamale struggles to stand in the gooey pile of mush.

Once he’s standing, the man looks like he’s attempting to ignite himself. Daichi isn’t quite sure—honestly, he kind of looks constipated. Either way, he decides to take this moment to try and salvage this situation, as fire apparently is not easily conjured when one is covered in melon juice.

“Look, we don’t want any trouble—“

Evidently, Dante’s Inferno sees the attempt at peace as an opening—honestly, why does Daichi even _bother_?— and decides to charge at Daichi anyway, flames or no flames. It’s startling, as the man comes at him with all the ferocity of a wild boar, and Daichi braces himself for the impending fight, channeling as much energy as possible to the forefront.

It’s Asahi, however, who moves. With a loud shout that was just a little too shrill to be counted as a battle cry, he throws his fist forward in what would be a pathetic form for a punch if it were anyone else, his other hand covering his face so he can’t see.

Coincidentally, their attacker chooses this instant to slip on the now-slick floor, falling right into Asahi’s fist, which collides solidly with his stomach.

The result is spectacular. The man goes flying straight into one of the tall shelves with enough force to knock the entire thing over. Asahi’s wail of horror is disrupted by a deafening crash of the shelf as it collides with the one behind it. Daichi finds himself cringing with the sound of hundreds of cans hitting the floor, countless glass jars smashing against the linoleum, and various liquids dribbling down the aisles. It seems to go on forever, until, finally, the final can falls, rolling pathetically past the wreckage and colliding with Daichi’s right foot.

The flaming man is unconscious. The small man is snoring. Asahi is near-hyperventilating.

Daichi just wishes for this nightmare to end.

“I am _so sorry_. I didn’t think I hit him that hard—Daichi, what if he’s dead? Then I really will have to bury a body. And what about the _store—mph!“_

“Alright Asahi, do you know what we are _not_ going to do?” Daichi says slowly, through clenched teeth, “We are not going to _panic_ , got it?”

Those are big words, honestly, because panicking sounds like a good idea right about now, but growing up with Asahi has taught Daichi that the only thing worse than a nervous Asahi was a full-blown-panicking Asahi—Daichi couldn’t take any more destruction today, and that’s exactly what would happen if it got out of hand without Suga around to keep everyone calm by force.

Asahi couldn’t speak with Daichi’s hand over his mouth, but he manages a slow nod, some of the tension leaving his shoulders at the familiarity of Daichi’s steady gaze.

“Okay, so first, you need to pick these two guys up, and just. . . put them somewhere. A closet, an office, whatever. Just make sure it _locks_ ,” Daichi begins to rattle off, walking over to the front of the store and shutting the blinds so that no one can look in. The sky is beginning to turn pink, and morning means people and customers. “What time is Ukkai supposed to be coming in?”

“Around ten I think?”

“Then, we’ve got a lot of work to do.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

Daichi thinks that maybe he should look into a career in house cleaning.

It takes four hours, and the combined efforts of Asahi and Daichi, but they manage to clean the store, throw away the damaged goods, and restock the shelves as they were before. Asahi easily lifts the aisle shelves up so that Daichi can extend his energy to sweep all of the debris into a manageable pile. It’s a joint effort with the restocking. Asahi carries several of boxes of cans and jars at a time and Daichi’s got a few energy channels picking up and placing the items where they belong. It’s a great exercise of his powers, Daichi thinks—he doesn’t get to do it often, and stretching his energy out like that feels just as good as a long stretch after spending a long time in a cramped position.

Once they’re finished, it looks almost as good as new—although they aren’t able to replace all of the merchandise in its entirety, like the melons, and Asahi had to get creative with the inventory charts to make up the difference. He doesn’t like tampering with the charts. It feels like he’s lying to Ukai-san, and despite his circumstances, Asahi had never learned how to be a convincing or guiltless liar.

None-the-less, it was almost impossible to tell that just a few hours ago a flaming tornado had nearly torn the place to shreds and taken out Daichi and Asahi with it, save for a very subtle smell that reminds Daichi of roasted marshmallows.

At this point, though, Daichi is exhausted—mentally and physically. He has pretty low stamina when it came to his powers, considering that he rarely ever calls on them. Asahi seems to catch on to that pretty quickly.

“Daichi,” he says with a grateful smile, catching his friend’s eye, “Thank you. I really don’t know what I would’ve done if you hadn’t come.”

For a moment, Asahi thinks he catches some warmth behind Daichi’s brown eyes, before just as soon as he sees it, the wall is back up and enforced with a stern expression. Daichi lets out an exasperated sigh, crossing his arms over his chest.

“Quit it. It wasn’t a big deal—I’m used to cleaning up after your messes, anyway.”

“Could you maybe be nice to me for once?” Asahi laments, but without any real hurt feelings. He knows Daichi doesn’t mean it, anyway.

Okay, no. Daichi definitely means it, but in the best way possible. Yeah, that’s what Asahi’s going to stick with.

The two stand in silence for a moment, when the realization seems to crash down on both of them at the same time.

“But what the _hell_ are we going to do about those two!?” Daichi groans, gripping onto his hair with one hand and tugging at it in frustration.

“I don’t know! I mean, I’m not even sure if they’re awake yet. They’ve been in the freezer for awhile now—“

“ _The freezer?!_ You put them in the _freezer_ , Asahi?!”

“ _It was the only room that I could lock from the outside!_ ”

Daichi takes a deep, calming breath. That’s it. Calm. He’s been doing so well with that thus far and he needs to keep it up if they are going to get out of this mess completely.

Daichi somehow manages to tell Asahi at a reasonable vocal volume, with minimal twitching, to take him to the freezer.

It’s a large, metal door with a small window, and Daichi steels himself for yet another pointless battle before peering into the frozen room.

The moments stretch on, and Asahi is growing more concerned as each one ticks by.

“Daichi? What is it? What’s going on?” he frets, resisting the urge to try and look in the room as well.

“Well. I think you might have to redo the inventory charts.”

“Oh no,” Asahi whines.

Daichi, on the other hand, is busy trying to quell his nausea as he watches their two captives eat.

And eat.

And _eat._

They seem to have emptied three whole boxes of frozen pork cutlets, and are currently roasting the pieces over a small open flame that the pyrokinetic had apparently been able to start, fueled by the cardboard boxes that had once held all of that meat. It was obviously heating the room—everything in the near vicinity is soppy and wet from the melted ice.

After what feels like several minutes of dismayed staring, the two trapped within the freezer finally notice Daichi’s face in the window.

The shorter one jumps to his feet, flying to the window so quickly that Daichi jerks his head away from it in surprise. He finds himself staring into large, intense brown eyes that are bright with irritation.

“It’s about damn time! Do you have any idea how long it’s been since I took a piss?!”

The other occupant is quick to butt his head in, so the two are pressed cheek-to-cheek and looking equally ready for another brawl.

“You bastards—got some nerve, locking us up in here! Let us out so we can settle this, fair and square!”

“Don’t worry bro, we’ve totally got this. They don’t look all that tough!” the shorter chimes in, fist raised, and Daichi feels the very last of his patience wither and die at the sheer volume of their voices, which seem to cut straight through the door and into Daichi’s throbbing temple.

“Is that right?” Daichi growls, a ferocious scowl on his face as he allows his energy to radiate off of him, bleeding through the cracks in the door and wrapping menacingly around the loud-mouths beyond it. The two are suddenly unable to find their words, fear shooting up their spine as Daichi begins to speak in a low voice.

“You two, who have trespassed, damaged property, stolen food, and attacked me and my friend here, are about three seconds away from getting your asses handed over to NORM on a silver platter with a pretty pink bow, risks to me be damned. I think it would be in your best interest to give me one good reason why I shouldn’t turn you in, and to do it now.”

The volatile mutants are effectively subdued, cowering slightly as they back away from the window. It’s a nice change, and Daichi is almost satisfied.

Until they both fall to their knees, hands clasp together and looking up into the window with the most pathetic expressions Daichi has ever had the misfortune of seeing on a grown man’s face. And he was friends with _Azumane Asahi_ , for crying out loud.

“I’m sorry,” the shorter one starts, speaking so rapidly that Daichi had a hard time understanding him, “I didn’t exactly mean to end up in your store—I just thought of somewhere far away and bam! Next thing I know I’m in the store! But, see, it takes a lot outta me and I was too tired to move and I didn’t think I’d be asleep for that long! I wasn’t gonna steal anything! Honest!”

“And we’d been doing a job! We got separated and I was looking for him the whole night and when I finally found him I thought he was in some sort of trouble—the big guy kinda looks like a thug—“

“ _Why is it always me?_ ”

“—and okay, maybe I over reacted but it had been a shit job and my powers affect my temper sometimes, who woulda thought?”

“But, Ryuu, you’re always a hot head.”

“No! It’s only because it was _you_ , Noya.”

And now there were _tears._ The shorter one clutches his chest, staring at his friend with something like reverence.

“You’re so cool, Ryu!”

“Not as awesome as you, Noya!”

“Ryuu!”

“Noya!”

 “ _Are you two finished?_ ”

“Right, right! Anyway, I didn’t mean to destroy the store and I attacked because I thought you were after Noya. I’m sorry!” the bald guys finishes with clasped hands, and the shorter one follows in suit.

“We will pay for the damage, definitely! But please don’t turn us in!” the smaller one, called Noya, pleads with a serious expression, bowing so deeply that it was a bit uncomfortable to watch.

They both look so sincere that Daichi can’t find it within himself to be angry anymore. He and Asahi share a look.

“Well,” Asahi mutters, probably too quiet for the other two to hear through the door, “They did apologize. . .”

Daichi sighs.

“Yeah, but I’m not sure about this. They said they were doing a job? What does that even mean?”

Asahi shrugs, looking as unsure as Daichi felt.

“I don’t know, but we can’t just leave them in there anyway. Besides, it’s not like we can actually turn them into NORM ourselves. . .”

Asahi is, unfortunately, right. Daichi has already had one close call with the organization in the past week and he doesn’t want another. Turning them in would mean questioning, formal documentation of the incident—things like that could easily get them in trouble.

There was only one option, really.

“If we let you out, you have to promise to leave, immediately,” Daichi tells the two captives through the door, voice firm, “We don’t want any more trouble.”

“From one Gifted to another—it’s a promise!” the short one replies with a sort of mock salute.

It’s a simple thing to unlock the latch on the door, and to open it up. Daichi and Asahi take a large step back from the door, cautious, but the other two mutants don’t give them any reason to be nervous. They show their hands as they slowly exit the room, movements deliberate and posture open.

Face to face now, Daichi takes in for the first time how tired and disheveled the two partners look, like they really had been awake for most of the night. Doing what, Daichi didn’t particularly care to know—it was probably better that he didn’t.

The seconds of silent observation drag on before a switch seems to flip in the shortest mutant’ head, his face transforming into a wide, confident smile that makes him look taller than he is.

“I have to say, you guys gotta have some skill if you took on Ryu! You’ve got my respect, at least. Name’s Nishinoya, and my friend here is Tanaka.”

He addresses both of them, but Daichi notices how Nishinoya’s tawny eyes are locked on Asahi, who fidgets uncomfortably under the attention. Daichi’s focus, however, is quickly back on the bald one, Tanaka, who steps forward, rubbing the back of his head in a sheepish gesture.

“Yeah, the big guy really did a number on me. I’ll be feeling that punch for weeks.”

“Ah, um, sorry. . .”

“Don’t sweat it—I deserved it. Besides, it was cool! I kinda want to arm wrestle you sometime!”

Daichi frowns. Baldy says that like they plan on seeing each other in the foreseeable future. Beside Daichi, Asahi just looks uncomfortable, unsure how to respond to the man’s enthusiasm towards his abnormal strength.

“Um, thanks, I guess? But I really don’t think that’s a good—”

“And you!” Daichi stares at the finger that’s suddenly pointed in his face, “You gotta tell me how you’ve escaped NORM’s radar all this time! Those bastards _love_ powers like yours!”

In their world, the statement was probably meant to be a compliment, but the reminder only feels like a cold stone in Diachi’s stomach. His frown deepens as he points resolutely towards the entryway.

“Yeah. Which is why I would prefer it if you two would get out of here before you’ve got NORM crawling all over the place.”

Tanaka blinks in surprise, like he’s only just remembered that major detail. Nishinoya puts a hand on his friend’s shoulder, getting his attention.

“He’s right, Ryu. We should get out of here. You got your phone, yeah?”

Tanaka’s face falls into a solemn expression as he nods an affirmative, fishing around in a pack attached to his hip. He pulls out a flip phone that looks beat up and, frankly, ancient. The outside is scratched and the screen flickers a bit when he presses on some of the buttons. It has a little volleyball charm attached to the corner.

Phones like that were no longer legal, not since the Reform.  In fact they were no longer made—what phone line was it even using? All cell phones produced now are all identical in appearance, produced by Shimizu Tech, and are directly linked with the NORM database. NORM has the ability to utilize any cell phone belonging to citizen of a Reformed province from any vantage point, access all of their information, listen into calls, and even track the phones.

It was one of the very reasons that Daichi owns one of them. NORM catalogues all individuals that did not own one of the cell phones. A refusal to have one only made you look suspicious. Daichi rarely uses his, and he’s silently glad that he’d left his at the apartment this morning—thankfully, Asahi had the presence of mind to call from the old phone of the grocery store and not his cell phone. It made it less likely that someone had been listening into the conversation.

Tanaka holds the illegal phone up to his ear.

“Hey, you’ve got my location? Can you check the area for me?”

Alarmed, Asahi and Daichi share yet another look— an organized group of unregistered mutants with an apparent contact and who are apparently being actively searched for by NORM sounded like nothing but bad news for anyone involved.

Daichi watches in both dread and fascination as Tanaka’s face changes very rapidly from serious to mild panic, locking eyes with Nishinoya, who grimaces at the expression. This probably isn’t good.

“. . . And I’m guessing you can’t like, magic-drive a car over here, can you. . . Yeah, I thought so.”

Tanaka makes a pathetic whining sound, before hanging up the phone and slapping his hand to his face. Nishinoya pats his back sympathetically, but looked equally despondent.

“They’re swarming the area, aren’t they?” Nishinoya states, more a declaration than a question.

“Yeah.”

Daichi feels his heart stutter in anxiety even as he glowers at the two wanted men, who recoil from his growing ire.  Daichi can feel Asahi’s energy flare as he catches onto the gravity of their situation.

“Let me guess. You’ve got NORM officers crawling all over the place trying to find you two.”

They nod glumly.

Daichi pinches the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger, taking a deep breath before exhaling heavily. This is decidedly Not Good.

If those two are caught, which they probably would be in less than two minutes if they  were to step outside of this building, NORM officers would unquestionably come to investigate the store, especially if this ‘job’ the two mutants said they had been doing was a crime. Which it probably was. Either way, even if Daichi could manage to escape the area himself, Asahi is an employee at this place. His entire background would be checked. Asahi would be done for.

And Daichi was not going to let that happen.

“All you guys need is a ride, right?” he finally utters after over a minute of contemplation.

Tanaka and Nishinoya blink, surprised by the question. They look at each other, before looking back at Daichi. They nod vigorously, but wisely choose to keep their mouths shut.

Seriously, the things Daichi has to deal with.

“Asahi, you should go get ready to open the store before Ukai gets here. I’ve got this handled, okay?”

Asahi looks like he wants to protest, but one firm look from Daichi and his words seem to wither and die. That, and Nishinoya is staring at him again, and he kind of wants to get away from him.

“Okay.”

“But before you go, I’m going to need to use the store’s phone. You two,” Daichi turns to the other two mutants with a hard stare, “Stay put. Don’t touch anything.”

They make a show of standing stock-still, and Daichi gives them one last look before he follows Asahi into a management office. Asahi gestures vaguely to an old white phone that sits beside a computer monitor. As Daichi reaches for it, Asahi’s voice gives him pause.

“Are you sure about this? Them, I mean,” he says in a hushed voice. There’s a deep frown on his face, heavy with worry, and misplaced guilt.

Daichi decides to fix it—it’s _aggravating_ — and brings up his fist to ground it roughly against Asahi’s furrowed brow. The larger man hisses and jerks his head away from the pain, and the look he gives Daichi now is much better—frazzled and bewildered and just a little annoyed. The gentle giant rubs the new red spot on his forehead.

“I already told you—I’ve got it. Stop worrying and go do your job,” Daichi scolds, leaving no room for argument.

“Sometimes, I honestly can’t tell if you actually like me or not,” Asahi grumbles, but turns and steps out of the room without further protest. He pauses, looking down at the floor, “But. . . Thanks, again. I swear I’ll return the favor someday.”

Daichi grins, “You’d better.”

He picks up the phone once Asahi disappears to get the store ready to open, and dials a very familiar number. It rings several times, and Daichi rolls his eyes when he gets the chipper voice mail, hanging up before the message begins to record. He dials again. He knows that she’ll eventually pick up if he just keeps calling.

_Hiya! You've reached the voicemail of-_

Redial.  
  
_Hiya! You've reached-_

Redial.

“ _What?!”_ slurs the familiar voice on the other end, rough with sleep, just as Daichi was beginning to think that he’d have to call a fourth time.

He smiles grimly, even though he knows she can’t see him, and prepares for the earful he’s about to get. He’s usually above begging, but this is a special case.

“Look, I know it’s early, and I swear I’ll buy you as much food as you want at that Thai place you like so much next time we go, but I really, _really_ need your help.”

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry, this one's later than I intended it to be /w\  
> Some powers are more obvious than others, but I hope I dropped enought hints! Not really any romantic development, but there's a bit of AsaNoya if you squint. 
> 
> As always, comments, questions, and critiques are always welcome~
> 
> Also: kurly-q.tumblr.com


	4. Though Nothing Ever Goes According to Plan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daichi can't catch a break, Tooru wishes he could forget, and Hitoka is really, really gay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: Implied dissociative episode. Also, minor violence depiction? There's a fight but honestly when is there not a fight?

 

Daichi should have run when he had the chance.

“—so have you ever seen someone run into a glass door? It was just like that! Daichi rain _straight_ into one of his energy shields at a dead sprint and lost both of his front teeth. And Daichi was crying so much and we were in such a panic that I ended up telling his dad that I’d punched him in the face! And do you know how his parents react?”

In the back seat, Tanaka and Noya were howling with laughter at this point, clinging to each other for support and pounding fists on the seats. How could two people at risk of being arrested be so carefree?

“His dad says ‘I always knew he took after me’, and Ms. Sawamura was so upset that her son hadn’t landed a punch that she signed him up for boxing lessons with me!”

Michimiya Yui throws Daichi a smile that’s simultaneously fierce and gleeful, a cruel spark in her brown eyes. It takes Daichi back to their middle school days, and he suppresses the urge to shudder at the endless memories of bruises and aching muscles.

“Kicked your ass for years, until high school, right?”

Daichi glares at her, but it’s spectacularly ineffective, and he’s certain that she’s only humiliating him like this because he forced her out of her house before her morning coffee. And, of course, she’s doing him a monumental favor—it was a bit of a gamble for her to be driving three mutants, two of them being hunted by NORM, to some obscure location in the middle of who-knows-where.

The  sources of all this trouble seem all too content to listen in on Daichi’s most embarrassing childhood moments, and Daichi briefly contemplates strangling them so that no one else’s ears would know of his tragically awkward youth.

“What happened in high school?” Nishinoya crows, cheeks still pink from laughter. He would have been sitting at the edge of his seat if Daichi hadn’t ordered him to put on his seatbelt—Yui’s driving was only mildly insane on a good day, and today was most definitely _not_ a good day, Daichi decides as Yui continues to weave haphazardly though traffic.

“He asked me out—you should have seen him, all blushing and stuttering. He was so _cute_ ,” she gushes, and Daichi wants to _die_ , “But I told him that I don’t date guys who can’t beat me in at least one fight. So he challenged me.”

“And he won!?”

“Yeah. I totally let him, though.”

“ _You did not!_ ” Daichi protests, face so red that he felt like the pyrokinetic in the back seat, who was laughing so hard that smoke was coming out of his nose and mouth.

“Maybe I didn’t,” Yui conceded with a grin, “Or maybe I did. We’ll never know, I guess.”

Daichi could do little else but sputter, before he settled on turning his face away and pressing it resentfully against the window.

“Wait, so are you guys still, ya know, dating?”

Yui lets out a light-hearted laugh and Daichi gnashes his teeth together, ears burning.

“Nah. We tried it out, but,” she shrugs, hands still on the steering will, “we just didn’t seem to have the right _chemistry_. Romance isn’t really my thing, and let’s just say that Daichi figured out that he wasn’t all that into what I was sporting beneath the belt.”

“ _How about_ we stop talking about my childhood, and figure out where the hell we’re going?” Daichi growls, trying to will his blush away while throwing a dirty look in the rearview mirror at the two wanted mutants that seem to be having _far_ too good of a time. They see his face and immediately shut their mouths. That is, until Yui starts speaking again.

“Don’t be such a sourpuss, Dai-dai,” Yui teases, and Daichi feels his insides squirm at the nickname, before addressing the two in the back once more, “He’s always been like this, I swear! In fact, there was this one time in our second year of middle school, when—”

If Daichi turned himself into NORM now, at least he might retain some of his dignity.

He tries to at least be thankful Suga isn’t here to add to his torture.

* * *

 

Okay, she’ll admit it.

She is way too short for this.

Standing on a trashcan remedies that detail, it may not be an exactly safe situation for someone like Yachi Hitoka to be in, considering just how clumsy she tends to be even on the best of days. It takes a lot of balance on her part to keep from falling over and breaking her neck, the metal container wobbling as she stretches up to press the poster against the wall. Her tongue sticks out in concentration, and she feels herself begin to perspire a bit behind the ski mask she’s got pulled over her head—a slightly silly and more-than-a-little unnecessary precaution that Shouyo had given her to protect her ‘secret identity’. He’s wearing one too, wherever he’s run off to, but she suspects that it was because he thought it made him look cool.

Once she finishes pasting the poster on the building, she carefully slides off the trashcan and takes a step back to admire her handiwork.

It’s a poster by her own design—the first one that she’s ever had the courage to print.  Hitoka’s proud of the sharp color contrasts—the large print edged with white. The image she edited of a little girl has the left side of her form portraying a happy, healthy child, a bright brown eye and flushed cheek, and the edge of her pink lips upturned in a smile, while the right half of her form is covered in smudges, cuts and bruises—her little hand is encased in mutant-restraint cuffs, and there is no light in her sunken eye or color to her ashen cheek.

 

**_Each One is Someone’s Child—Don’t They Deserve to Smile, Too?_ **

_End the experimentation and normalization of mutants._

_Join the Fight._

 

She’s pleased with it, and it sends the message that she wants it to. Underneath the text is the link to an anti-NORM activist site that’s rising in popularity and is supported by her mother’s company. Without Yachi Press backing it up, the site and a lot of other mutant-rights activist sites and programs would have probably been eliminated a long time ago. She’s proud of the work her mother is doing—and she wants to be a part of that.

It’s the fifth poster that she’s put up in the last half-hour, and the location she’s chosen is perhaps the riskiest part of the whole ordeal. Sure, activists groups put posters up like this all the time.

But right outside of Shimizu Tech’s headquarters?

The blonde can’t quite stifle a little grin of excitement, and does a little dance by herself to burn off the jittery feeling. If she could show her mom, she knows that she would be proud of her. And she had even posted the posters herself! It’s the boldest thing she’s ever done, and somehow it makes her feel powerful, a feeling that she’s unfamiliar with.

She’s so consumed with staring at the poster,  that she doesn’t hear nor see the officer until he’s only feet away. This is amazing to her, considering the expression that the man wears, brow furrowed so deep that it looks as though there’s a shadow over his eyes. He’s much taller than she is—but then again most people are—and intimidating, with hair standing in a miraculously pointy hairstyle reminiscent of a turnip. He’s acting as a security guard, so he’s not in full attire, but it seems just as well that he’s not wearing the helmet that other NORM officers wear. He’s terrifying enough without it.

Hitoka is frozen to her spot in front of the trashcan, unable to decide whether she should be running or surrendering. She must _look_ like a criminal with her all-black clothes and ski mask.

No, she absolutely _can’t_ be caught here—not now, not ever! She would be detained, interrogated, tested, registered, and normalized—in that order. Her life would never be the same, her mind and body altered forever. A familiar, cold fear blossomed in her stomach, and she swallowed thickly.

 But even more terrifying to her than her own fate, if she was caught today, would be the danger this could cause her mother and her friends.

“Hey,” the officer barks, “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

 His voice is as scary as the rest of him, and she jumps back so far that her back connects with the trashcan—or rather, it would have, if she had been focusing her mind enough to keep her body settled firmly in the realm of the understood laws of physics.

She goes straight through it, landing flat on her behind and only partially solid on the dirty pavement. In front of her, the officer freezes in surprise, and _oh no, now she’s really in trouble_. Despite all the thoughts whirling around in her mind as the panic rises, something about the officer’s moment of indecision brings clarity. It makes her remember that she still has a way to get away from this.

In the blink of an eye, Hitoka fades from sight.

The NORM officer, startled, can hear his suspect’s footsteps as she rounds the nearest corner and into the nearest alleyway. At the end of it is a street that has much more traffic, and with a frantic look around she realizes that she’s standing in the center of several buildings, stretching high into the sky and gleaming in the sun, all of which belong to Shimizu Tech. Behind her, she can hear the NORM officer’s voice.

“—backup. Suspect has cloaking and phasing ability. Need personel who can track—”

Not good. This is extremely Not Good.

Hitoka does the best thing that she can do in the situation. Remaining invisible, she dives into the crowd, trying her best to weave in between people as best she can without touching them. She knows, however, that soon the area will be swarmed with NORM officers, some of which may be able to track her somehow.

With this in mind, she quickens her pace, taking as many random alleyways and streets as she can to try and confuse her pursuers. She does this until she feels that her head is spinning and she’s not exactly sure where she is anymore, finding herself standing in front of wall-protected property that seems to be just outside of Shimizu Tech’s domain. The land is still owned by the company, she thinks, but it’s privately owned and not a lot of people commute through here.

The wall is several meters high, reinforced metal that’s likely near-indestructible. This wall seems to be meant to provide privacy as well as protection, as she observes the way long, curved bars of that same metal curl skywards, inwards, skeletal in purpose. When she squints, she can make out a shimmering haze that stretches between the bars, can feel slight quivering of air that indicates some sort of energy shield.

The mutant hears the telltale sound of steel-lined boots clacking against the pavement coming in her direction. She bites her lip, her only option too unpredictable for her liking.

Her body becomes visible again—honestly, she wasn’t sure if she would ever learn how to use both of her powers at the same time—phasing through the wall with baited breath, hoping that the energy field wouldn’t force her back or otherwise scatter her molecules. That would be messy.

Hitoka makes it across with a sigh of relief, and she listens over the pounding in her ears as the NORM officers pass by the home, none-the-wiser, speaking into their communicators with urgency. She overhears that a strict alert has been placed around the area, and she sags with dread—how is she supposed to get out if NORM has maximum security around the area?

One thing at a time, she supposes.

She takes a moment to look around.

Beyond that gate is apparently what can only be called an oasis. Hitoka didn’t know a place like this could exist in Reformed Tokyo—where any green grass had been long-since ripped from the earth and  replaced with a new building or some other concrete box. She had never seen such green.

Unsure what else she could do in her situation, and because she was too jittery to stay still, she decides to walk, fingers touching every green plant that she comes across, fascinated.

It takes several minutes of walking before she sees something between the trees, up ahead. A building? She squints, getting closer to confirm her suspicions. Soon, she can make out a house—no, this is a _mansion_. A mansion tucked away in a secluded haven, hidden within the boundaries of Reformed Tokyo. She can’t help but wonder what could lie within such a beautiful home protected by an energy dome, but she doesn’t really have the luxury of sight-seeing.

Cautiously, she approaches the house under the cover of the trees, careful to remain unseen by anything that might be watching. She sees a large patio, adorned with pots that held beautiful flower arrangements, a small fountain in the center that trickled pleasantly over the distant background noise of city traffic from beyond the walls. The tree-line stops a ways away from the edge of a patio, and she doesn’t really need to kneel to conceal herself behind the foliage, but she finds herself fading until only light filters through her phantom body. It did nothing to mask her foot-falls, but it makes her feel more comfortable as she daringly comes up to the edge of the trees.

The house is made of what she assumes to be reinforced glass—there is no way that a home built within the territory of Shimizu Tech could be destroyed by anything short of an atomic bomb—and is tall and beautiful and glimmering.

Yet, despite its architectural beauty, Hitoka’s eyes are instead drawn to something else.

There is a person on the patio, just beyond a large potted shrub, hiding within its shade. A young woman, about Hitoka’s age.

The intruder stops, part of her mind going inconveniently blank while the rest of it scrambles to make a decision, torn between the need to remove herself from the vicinity and simply staring at the woman.

Who just happens to be the most beautiful person she’s ever seen.

The woman sits on a patio chair, her slender build unmoving as her gaze remains trained on a book, elegant hands delicately turning the pages. She’s a monochrome splash against the green vegetation, her skin nearly as white as the collared blouse she’s wearing, and midnight hair falling down her back, black as the a-line skirt that is splayed around her where she sits. She’s unlike Hitoka the intruder, who is really just pale yellows and browns. But this other woman, even in this society of mandated ordinariness, couldn’t be anything less than extraordinary.

Yet this beautiful person lives here, on property owned by Shimizu Tech, and is most likely afraid of people like her. People who are on the abhorrent side of abnormal.

This fact seems to shock Hitoka back into reality—and she knows that she needs to go, especially since there’s another person here that might see her. After all, she can’t hide out forever, and the truth-be-told her powers are actually pretty tiring after awhile.

Carefully, she takes a step back. Then another. Her breathing’s too loud and her feet are clumsy, but surely at such a distance, the other woman wouldn’t be able to hear, especially over the fount—

“Who’s there?”

Her heart skips a beat and her mind becomes a frenzy of thoughts that can be summed up in equal parts as “Oh, crap, I’ve been caught”, and “Oh, wow, her _voice_.”

“I know you’re there. Come out.”

She swallows at the command in the woman’s voice. It’s calm and sure in its quietness, and even though Hitoka’s technically a greater threat with her powers, she suddenly feels vulnerable.

She stands stock-still, solidifying herself in her cloak of invisibility, and holds her breath.

Most people, in this world sickened by a phobia of mutants, would have immediately run, called for the authorities in fear. But the dark-haired woman is proving to be more and more amazing in each passing moment, as she calmly places her book down and stands. She moves elegantly and she walks as though every living thing, down to each blade of grass, would part in her wake. She approaches, and from the closing distance, the mutant can see that she was wrong—monochrome wasn’t the right word, because the woman’s eyes, stunning lavender, were anything but colorless. They were enough color to outshine pale skin and dark hair and green grass and blue sky and the vastness of space oh my _god_ \--

Hitoka realizes with more than a little alarm that the woman is looking _at_ her.

Well, through her. And the woman’s eyes seem to be not quite focused on her face, more towards her feet, but nonetheless it’s still disconcerting. She’s spent most of her life being either looked over or looked through, powers or no powers, and she isn’t used to being sought out, let alone _seen_.

The woman stops just a few feet away from her, eyes drifting over the area where Hitoka stands, holding her breath, heart stuttering in her chest with both anxiety and awe.

Up close, the woman is almost unreal.

“I can’t see you, but I can tell that you’re here.”

She wants to respond—oh how does she want to, but even under different circumstances she wouldn’t have been able to find the words. Even if she hadn’t been born a mutant and was not currently escaping arrest by governmental authorities she wouldn’t, not in a million years, be able to talk to this woman.

“Your body is parting the leaves.”

Hitoka looks down. The other woman is right. This is why she should really learn to use both of her powers _at the same time_.

“And you’re crushing the tulips.”

“Oh my god, I am _so sorry_. I’m so—”

It’s really a useless effort on her part as she tries to uncrush the tulips, as ever time she steps to the left or to the right she destroys yet another innocent plant—she’s so frazzled that she can’t think properly, mortified to the point of unintelligible stammering.

“Ah, s-sorry! S-“

The beautiful woman blinks, ever-calm. She seems neither annoyed with Hitoka’s blundering, nor amused, and the uncertainty makes the blonde even more nervous, until It Happens.

One pale, elegant hand reaches out, all long fingers and manicured nails, and rests directly on Hitoka’s shoulder.

 Hitoka freezes for about one second before she loses all control of both her powers and her hormones, going completely visible just in time for the woman to see her face turn cherry-red.

_Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, ohmygo-_

“A-Ah! U-um!”

“Should I be ignoring the mask? Are you here to rob me?”

Hitoka remembers with mortification what she must look like, head covered by the mask, wearing all black, and intruding on private property— _not suspicious at all._

“I-I’m not a robber, I swear! I wouldn’t ever use my powers for that! Oh, though I was kind of vandalizing, wasn’t I? B-But it was for a good cause! A-Although, not everyone would think so, but. . . I’m really not going to hurt you or anything! I swear! I wouldn’t’ even know how to—not that I would even if did!” Hitoka babbles, tugging at the ski mask but unsure whether or not she should take it off or not. She’s _this close_ to just vanishing again, because there’s nothing good that can be made of this situation at this point, _absolutely nothing_ , when the woman in front of her begins to laugh.

Oh. Well, that's better than running and screaming, at any rate.

In fact, Hitoka's pretty sure that her brain has shorted-out because _holy guacamole._ The woman’s laugh is unbelievably cute, and it had been _Hitoka_ that had made her laugh— _score_. She’s been waiting her whole life to make a pretty woman laugh. She only wishes that the circumstances were different.

“I was kidding about you being a robber, or about you being able to hurting me. You seem very kind,” the woman laughed with that soft, lovely voice of hers, “But I am worried that you’ve chosen a terrible hiding place.”

And, ah, there goes the good feeling. Hitoka swallows, wringing her hands, her stomach caught between being full of butterflies and twisting in nervousness.

“I-Is that so?”

The woman nods, face composed and eyes serious.

“This estate has its own personal NORM guards. It’s lucky that I found you first.”

Hitoka stiffens, eyes darting around quickly as though expecting said guards to leap out of the bushes, put her in restraint cuffs, and cart her off to interrogation right then and there. The woman seems to notice how suddenly on-edge she is, and continues to speak.

“But, I know a way out of here. . . One that no one else knows about. I can show it to you.”

It’s all terribly convenient. Hitoka is rarely a lucky person and is having a hard time believing that anything could go right at this point, despite her tendency to assume the best in people. She can’t help but give pause, brown eyes regarding the dark-haired woman with slight suspicion.

The woman can see her uncertainty. Her lavender eyes turn a bit sad behind their coolness. She looks straight into Hitoka’s eyes, lips pressed into a thin line, dropping her hand from Hitoka’s shoulder, as though she’s unsure whether or not it should be allowed there. Hitoka kind of wants it back.

“I know it’s asking a lot,” the woman murmurs, “ but please trust me. It sounds strange I guess, but I don’t want you to be arrested, especially not here. I can tell that you’re a good person. Different, and good. It. . . I don’t believe it should be a crime to be different.”

Hitoka’s breath catches in her throat, and something aches behind her ribs at the woman’s words—this stranger who seems to truly care about whether or not she makes it out of here. She takes a deep breath, closing her eyes in a few moments of thought. It’s not as though she has a choice, and, as foolish as it is, she finds herself trusting this woman.

“Okay,” Hitoka whispers.

The woman seems to relax in relief, and she reaches out to grab at the blonde’s hand, who jolts at the sudden contact. 

“This way.”

Hitoka follows the woman as she begins to walk deeper into the foliage, the patio and the beautiful house getting further away as they weave through shrubs and other plants. The woman is infinitely more graceful than Hitoka, her foot not catching on a single root or stone, but Hitoka has to cheat a bit, allowing her feet and legs to phase through whatever might send her face-first into the dirt.  
  
The dark-haired woman seems to know where she’s going even though she doesn’t use a path, and the blonde is continually impressed by how incredibly large the property is.

Hitoka follows her until she can once again see the wall again, the slight haze of the energy dome visible just above it.

“There’s another gateway that’s no longer used, other than our entryway. It’s grown over now, but the energy shield doesn’t work anymore. If you get through it, there’s a clear shot out of Shimizu territory. There are no NORM officers stationed there, so no one should be looking for you,” the woman rattles off, pointing in the direction of the gate, and Hitoka forces herself to focus on her words so that she doesn’t focus on the way the woman’s long hair leaves a pleasant smell behind her as they walk, or how the tone of her voice makes it nearly impossible to be as nervous as she probably should be.

She wonders briefly how the woman knows she’s being looked for, but she decides that she is in no place to look a gift horse in the mouth. In fact, Hitoka almost feels like she’s in the clear, when the woman suddenly stops, stock-still. The mutant just barely manages not to knock into her.

The woman cocks her head, as though she can hear something that Hitoka can’t, before she whirls around, muttering something under her breath that sounds like a curse. She grasps the blonde’s shoulders, her voice low and urgent, and Hitoka feels ice crawl up her spine.

“Can you use psychic shield?”

Hitoka shakes her head, confused by the woman’s knowledge about mutant abilities, heart in her throat as she looks around for whatever threat the woman seems to know is there. The woman grimaces, reaching out and grabbing her hand.

“I’m sorry about this, but you need to stay close to me. Keep hold of my hand.”

The mutant does so without another thought, but before she can ask what was going on, the woman tenses up, eyes turning towards the sky.

 “Disappear,” the woman hisses, “ _Now.”_

Hitoka does as she’s told before she has time to think about it, and the next thing she knows she sees something descending from above the trees. Hitoka looks skyward, blinking in surprise as she sees two figures coming into view from above the branches.

They’re two men, NORM officers, dressed in the same slick, black suits without the helmet. They stand on what Hitoka recognizes as a Tele-Board—something Shimizu Tech had created specifically for the use of NORM recruits with telekinetic abilities. They were designed expertly to be easily manipulated by their mental-users, were aerodynamic, and equipped with advanced weaponry that could be operated with the mind. Hitoka wonders which of the two is controlling it.

The Tele-Board lowers itself slowly until it’s only a couple feet off the ground. Hitoka’s question is answered when the one standing on the back of the board jumps down. He’s tall, though not quite as tall as the man still on the board, with ash-brown hair. He looks younger than he probably is, judging by the silver badge that Hitoka can see glinting on his uniform—the mark of someone in the 2nd Division, a class of NORM officers who were typically several years out of the Academy and were qualified to lead divisions. Hitoka was willing to bet that he was the leader of the guards stationed on this property.

“Ah, Yahaba,” the woman addresses the man, sounding nonplussed, “You startled me.”

The leader, Yahaba, scans the area with penetrating eyes that somehow makes Hitoka’s skin crawl. His gaze softens when he looks to the dark-haired woman, giving a respectful bow of his head.

“Shimizu-sama,” he addressed her, “What are you doing out here?”

“Taking a walk,” she lies easily, tilting her head curiously, “What’s happened? Am I needed?”

The man holds his hand up with a smile so disarming that Hitoka was almost perturbed by it, sensing something less friendly lying beneath.

“No, no. It’s just that there is a high security alert going on right now. It would be best to return to the house immediately,” he says, clearly knowing that he has no true authority over the woman—Shimizu, Hitoka realizes with some trepidation—who is a member of one of the most powerful families in Reformed Tokyo, and one of the greatest supporters and assets of NORM.

Suddenly, Shimizu’s warm skin beneath her palm feels ice cold. Hitoka realizes that she might have gotten herself into more trouble than she had thought. This woman could mean a swifter punishment than would be dealt to her otherwise.

“I see,” Shimizu says coolly, “but, why are you all out here, Yahaba?”

Yahaba’s eyes flash with annoyance, his upper lip twitching upwards in the beginning of a snarl. He seems to catch himself, though, transforming the look into a sharp smile.

“Kyoutani smelled something unfamiliar. Given the alert, we had to investigate. However, once he caught a scent trail he ran off on his own.”

 “Then, I suppose it would be best for me to go back,” the other woman says.

Yahaba is about to nod in agreement, when he freezes, eyes darting to the telekinetic who is still hovering above him in the Tele-Board. There is a beat of silence as they lock eyes, and Hitoka suddenly understands why Shimizu had asked if she had the ability to shield her mind.

 “Ah, you’re right, Kageyama,” the apparent telepath says aloud, Hitoka suspects for Shimizu’s benefit, “Someone should escort Shimizu-sama back to the estate.”

He’s _dark_ , this Kageyama—Hitoka can’t think of any other way to describe him. His hair is as sleek and black as his suit, with eyes somewhere between navy and charcoal. His expression seems to be fixed on stormy, and coupled with his tall height, he’s undeniably intimidating, even without the knowledge that he is equipped with abilities belonging to one of the most feared subset of mutant powers.

At his words, Shimizu goes very still, the type of still someone goes when they’re preparing to make a quick decision.

“That won’t be necessary,” she states, and receives a small frown form Yahaba.

“Shimizu-sama,” he begins, tone carefully respectful, “I cannot in good conscience allow you to be left alone when there may be a potential mutant threat within the estate. Please allow Kageyama to return with you.”

Hitoka bites her lip, unconsciously tightening her hold on Shimizu’s slack fingers even as she fears that the other woman will abandon her in this moment.

It turns out that Hitoka doesn’t need to find out, as Shimizu opens her mouth to speak, only to be cut off by the startling sight and sound of _something_ bursting from the trees. Hitoka has to bite her tongue to keep from shrieking, and she nearly jerks away from Shimizu, but the woman’s hand clamps on hers quickly, staying her.

Hitoka stares in terror at an enormous, wolfish dog, with bristling, deep-gold fur marred with scars. Its muzzle is black, the color bleeding into two lines that streak down his sides, with sharp golden eyes that blaze with intensity. It’s nothing but raw power packed into bulging muscles and sharp claws, lips curl back into a snarl to reveal long, white canines.

“Kyoutani!” Hitoka hears Yahaba yell, though she can’t take her eyes off the massive creature, “I told you to keep beneath us!”

The dog’s ears pin flat against his head, throwing Kageyama a dirty look.

 “Don’t you blame Kageyama,” Yahaba snaps, quite viciously despite his boyish face, and the dog visibly flinches. Yahaba opens his mouth as though to say something else, but the dog suddenly goes rigid, and Yahaba freezes in suit, lips parted.

Hitoka can tell something was exchanged between them in a split second, Yahaba’s eyes narrowing slightly before Kyoutani’s nose turns to the air, scenting. It’s only then that Hitoka realizes that Shimizu’s hand is gripping hers so tightly that it’s turned bone-white.

Her heart stops when, eyes narrowed, the dog locks onto where she’s standing, human-like eyes entirely suspicious. Out of the corner of her eyes, Hitoka can see Yahaba reaching for his belt with one hand. Kageyama’s fingers twitch. For one moment, Hitoka's ears ring with absolute stillness.

A fierce growl works its way out of Kyoutani’s throat, taking one massive step towards Shimizu and Hitoka.

Shimizu moves.

For a moment, Hitoka thinks that the high-pitched cry ringing through the air is her own, but realizes that it had been Shimizu who had let out the sound. Hitoka is sprawled on top of the woman, breathless but still invisible, staring straight into lavender eyes that stare up at her with a purpose. The woman’s hand, long fingers curled over her wrist from where she’d pulled both of them to the ground, tightens there.  
  
“ _Run_ ,” she mouths.

As soon as Hitoka pushes herself up from Shimizu, Yahaba’s eyes widen like he can see her even though she knows he can’t.

But for whatever reason, now he can sense her mind.

“ _On your left_ ,” Yahaba cries aloud, and Hitoka bolts.

But Kyoutani is apparently faster, and with good hearing, because he’s in her path immediately. Hitoka makes another quick decision.

Mid-stride, she allows her body to phase, lifting her invisibility. It’s a risky trade, but it’s the only option she has.

Kyoutani lets out a yelp as Hitoka phases through his body, the large dog falling over with the shock of it, unconscious. Hitoka can’t help but think that’s only an advantage to her, even if she’ll feel guilty about it later, as she dives into the thick foliage. The phase is exhausting this time around, and Hitoka knows that soon she won’t be able to keep it up at all.

Shots ring out behind her, though, and she forces herself to maintain her powers as she runs, the bullets passing harmlessly through her and into the passing trees and bushes. Phasing also makes her lighter, makes her faster, and that’s what she needs.

The wall is in sight, and she nearly lets out a cry of joy when, sure enough, Hitoka can see a gate covered in overgrown foliage. The energy shield stops just above the gate, and even if she doesn’t have the time to open it, she thinks she might be able to phase through it. She has to.

“ _STOP_ ,” a voice bellows, and Hitoka knows it’s the telekinetic—he could easily keep up with her on  the Tele-Board.

She ignores him, focusing on keeping up her phasing. She’s so close, so close to freedom.

Her arm is through, when she feels it—her molecules no longer able to rearrange themselves for her benefit, tightening, becoming rigid. She gasps as she is forced to jarring stop, only half-way through the gate. One leg, one arm, and her face stick through to the other side.

She begins to struggle, panicking, desperately trying to summon one last ounce of energy just to get her through. Inch by inch, she pulls herself. But it’s not fast enough. Kageyama flies over the wall on his board, descending from above her like a bird of prey. Hitoka stares up in terror, looking into his eyes, devoid of both malice and compassion. It almost makes it worse, Hitoka thinks, knowing that he’s just doing his job.

 The NORM guard steps off of its board, leaving it where it remains hovering a few centimeters off of the ground. Each step of his metal boots towards her sounds like a nail being driven into her coffin.

When he stops before her, hands reaching for what Hitoka recognizes as mutant-restraint cuffs, just like the one in her poster, something within her breaks. Hopelessness blooms in her chest like a weed, choking out the fear—she’s thought about this before, has been dreading this moment ever since the first time she’d phased through one of her chairs at home. Ever since the first time she’d been marked as absent from class even though she’d been sitting there the whole time.

She had just never truly believed it would happen to her, or perhaps she has refused to. Tears well up in her eyes, but they seem frozen there on her lashes, trapped just as she was.

“I am Officer Kageyama,” Kageyama recites, “of the National Organization for the Regulation of Mutants. You are under arrest for trespassing, vandalism, assault, and the use of abilities that pose a danger to the public,” he finishes, punctuated by the click of the cuffs as they open. Hitoka can barely comprehend his words through the numbness clouding her thoughts. She looks beyond him, down the long straight path that Shimizu had promised would lead to her freedom.

 A path that’s not entirely clear, she sees now. Her eyes are automatically focus on something else—something startlingly orange—something moving towards them. _Fast_.

“YAAAA-CHAAAAN,” a shrill voice rings out between the buildings, and Kageyama’s eyes widen just in time for a flash of solid orange to knock him off his feet, too fast for the officer to react. He goes flying away from Hitoka and her wall-prison, and doesn’t land gracefully, skidding on his behind before coming to a painful-looking stop, splayed in a pile of long limbs on the concrete. Hitoka is suddenly face-to-face with a nest of wild orange hair, and honey brown eyes shining with tears.

“Shouyo,” Hitoka breathes, and she’s certain that she’s never felt so relieved in all her life.

Shouyo brackets the part of her face that's sticking out of the wall, and begins to bawl.

“I thought I lost you,” the red-head blubbers, “I heard the alert, and I was so scared you’d been caught. I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to leave, but I ran too far and got lost!”

Hitoka couldn’t find it within her to cry at that moment. Call it shock, but it was probably because the telekinetic was moving again and they _really needed to get out of here before they both got arrested_.

“Shouyo , pull me!” she cries urgently, feeling the blood drain from her face as the telekinetic begins to rise, sheer wrath bursting behind his dark eyes as he pins Shouyo with a look that could melt what little was left of the Arctic in an instant. His Tele-Board flies to him, and he climbs onto it. Yachi hears the dreadful shift of metal as Kageyama’s powers synchronize with the board's facilities. Weapons.

“ _Pull me now!”_

Shouyo turns his head. He takes one look at Kageyama and squawks in alarm, his small hands grasping onto Hitoka’s arm and pulling with all his might. He digs his heels into the concrete, feet moving at an inhuman speed as he tries to maximize the force of his pull.

Hitoka concentrates as hard as she can. She’s sweating and breathless and dizzy with the exertion, but she can finally feel herself begin to slide through the gate, unimpeded by an energy shield and forced through by Shouyo’s pulling.

It feels like the moment when you finally manage to get your finger unstuck from something it should have never been in. One moment Hitoka is wedged in the wall, the next she’s falling towards the ground for what felt like the thousandth time that day. Shouyo—so quickly that Hitoka’s mind can’t keep up, catches her, shoving her behind him in a show of bravery that Hitoka sometimes forgets he possesses.

Just in time, because there’s a gun pointed at them, protruding from the bottom of the board. Hitoka glances at the red dot hovering over Shouyo’s chest, over his heart, and Hitoka’s breath stutters at the sight of it, afraid for him, even though she knows that she’s in just as much danger.

“One move from either of you, and I will shoot,” the officer warns.

Kageyama addresses both of them, but he’s staring at Shouyo, who seems motionless even though Hitoka can sense his limbs vibrating ever so slightly in anticipation.

“So we get one move?” Shouyo echoes, and Kageyama’s eyes are abruptly wary—Hitoka can imagine it, what he must see burning in Shouyo’s eyes in that moment even though she can’t see them herself.

“Do. Not. Move,” Kageyama snarls, one last warning.

Shouyo blinks. Hitoka braces herself.

“No.”

Hitoka clenches her eyes shut.

Bullets embed themselves into the wall behind where they were just standing. Kageyama blinks, his eyes trying to follow the blur of orange and yellow that had just crossed his vision, but fails. Baffled and furious, Kageyama spins around wildly on his Tele-Board, looking for any sign of the two mutants that had single-handedly caused the highest-security alert in NORM history in several years. He floats higher, looking out further in further in the hopes of sighting them.

But they were long gone, flashes of orange and yellow against asphalt.

* * *

 

Sitting on her bed, Shimizu listens to her father from across the estate, bellowing into his phone in rage. Two mutants, having made their way into the heart of Shimizu Enterprises, escaped unscathed, one having assaulted his daughter.

One mutant, with warm skin and buttercup hair poking through a black ski-mask. With brown-sugar eyes and a doll face, a small body hosting a kind and passionate soul.

 _Yachi Press_ , the clue in her hand says.

She smiles.

 

* * *

 

Hajime was ten days old when Tooru came into the world, and they had been together ever since. Their friendship hadn't been up to the two of them, not in the beginning anyway. Their mothers had lived in the same neighborhood, and had become close friends during their pregnancies. Both of their names had been decided together, as had their strollers and pajama sets and bibs and even the location of their first birthdays— all before they had even seen the light of day.

It would never fail to amuse Hajime that Tooru was supposed to be older than him. Hajime’s due date was exactly one week after Tooru’s, and yet the cosmos had decided that it would only do to have Hajime come first.

He was told that when he was born, he didn’t cry. He was silent, worryingly so, until ten days later when Oikawa had come into the world, too silent and too still for the person that he would grow up to be. It was only then that Hajime, cradled in his mother’s arms in the same room, began to wail as though he’d been making up for lost time, and it seemed only natural that Tooru followed in suit. Tooru’s mother probably still jokes about fate having Hajime be born first so that Tooru would have someone to follow—someone who would always pave the way wherever he tread.

And for a time that had been true. When they were young, Hajime continued to keep one foot in front of Tooru’s around every bend and curve. Tooru used to say that he was always trying to keep up with Hajime, but the truth was that Hajime was the one always trying to outpace him, if for no other reason than to make sure he wouldn’t be left behind instead. And he would be, if he wasn’t careful.

The thing is, from day one, Oikawa Tooru only seemed to know how to charge through life like he had something to prove and everything to give. Yet, for all his talent and intelligence, he never thought far enough ahead to foresee the consequences. He always had to be better, faster, smarter,  _stronger_ at any cost—and the only one able to keep up with him was his best friend. The only person in life who had ever given him heels to tread on had been Hajime.

Hajime was the first to learn to crawl, the first to take his first steps, to say his first words. And Tooru had only been a hairsbreadth behind in sharing those moments with Hajime, and if things had gone as planned, Hajime would have always kept things that way. All Hajime had ever wanted to do was make the going a little easier for him.  If he could only keep Tooru behind him, he might be able to protect him, but that had just been wishful thinking on Hajime’s part, to be sure.

Because for all his wishing, it seemed as though he was never able to protect Tooru when it truly mattered. It had been Tooru who was first to learn that he wasn’t normal. It had been Tooru who’d first been forced to learn how truly terrible abnormality could be.

As they grew older and life began to throw them one challenge after another, things ceased to be so simple as leading and following. Try as Hajime did, the world simply demanded too much of Oikawa Tooru, and Hajime couldn’t protect him from all who wanted nothing more than to watch him cut himself open and poor his lifeblood until his heart ran dry. Hajime couldn’t stop Tooru when he would turn down paths so bleak that Hajime could only follow him down into their darkness, even when Tooru insisted on stumbling blindly through them on his own.

Hajime had decided long ago that if he couldn’t pave the way, then he would be there to catch Tooru when he inevitably fell, to drag him through mud, grim, and blood when he had no strength of his own, to pump life back into his veins when he had none left.

And, even when they had long-since escaped the prison that they’d built for themselves and into one that had already been prepared for them, the world continued to use Oikawa Tooru at the expense of Tooru himself. Hajime, sometimes, just has to let it happen, because the reality was that Tooru’s gifts were too useful to be unused. He allowed it to happen, under the condition that he would be there to put Tooru back together again afterwards.

He would always be there, if he had anything to say about it.

“Yeah, I got it. No he. . . Right. . .  I’ll be there.”

Hajime lowers his cell phone from his ear just as he hears the person on the other end hang up, resisting the urge to smash it into the countertop so that it could never ring again, fingers trembling with barely restrained frustration. _Damnit._

 But despite his blood pressure rising, his sensitive ears catch a small whimper coming from behind their bedroom door. Opening his eyes, he realizes that he’s been standing at their kitchen counter like this for a long time, it seems—the tea has gone cold without him having even taken a sip. He doesn’t want it now, and he puts the mug down on the counter. His bare feet make soft slaps against the wooden floors as he moves across the quiet living space, coming up to the closed door with a little alien charm dangling from the doorknob. It clangs against the wood of the door as he turns the knob and pushes the door open.

The room is as pitch black as he’d left it. He doesn’t turn on the lights as he crosses the room, kneeling in front of the only bed.

He looks small like this, curled up under countless covers in what is no doubt a fetal position, completely still. Small isn’t a word that most would normally associate with Oikawa Tooru. He was someone who normally sat imperiously atop a proverbial throne, built with his bare hands, splintered and bleeding, with utter contempt for all others whose thrones had been made for them. He was a relentless storm in some ways, an immovable mountain in others, an impenetrable fortress in others still. To most people, he was larger than life, to be sure; the great Oikawa Tooru was in no way _small_.

Hajime is not most people.

He crouches beside the crumpled form, peels back the covers slightly to reveal a mop of brown hair, splayed everywhere and slightly greasy. The figure shifts, hair falling like curtains over the gaunt face beneath, ashen, marred by deep purple bruising beneath eyes that fell unusually flat as they swiveled in Hajime’s direction.

Hajime gives him a wry smile, reaching out to gently comb Tooru’s hair from his eyes. He simultaneously feels for any signs of pain or discomfort, anything he might be able to fix even though he’s checked a thousand times.

“Oi, you’ve been asleep for hours. How long are you going to make me do all the chores?” he says, falling into their familiar pattern even though there was no bite behind the words. He has to force himself to keep his voice from wavering.

Even after all these years, the vacancy is these copper-brown eyes never fail to shake something within him. He knows that somewhere buried behind them is the obnoxious, brilliant person that he can’t deny is the most important person in his life, but in the back of Hajime’s mind, he’s always reminded of a possibility—one that he can’t prove actually exists unless it were to happen. It’s a possibility that has the habit of keeping him awake at night and shaking him out of sleep just to check on Tooru and make sure it hasn’t come true.

The possibility that, one day, Tooru might never truly come back from wherever he goes when he uses his powers to their devastating extent.

It’s a fear that Hajime keeps well hidden, for all the good it did him with Tooru and his strange perceptiveness, nevermind his actual mutant abilities. Even so, he always feels the need to keep it under control, or else he thinks it might consume him every time he’s met with blank, uncomprehending eyes.

“Iwa-chan. . .” croaks the pathetic lump of a human in the bed, and Hajime can feel the tension leave his shoulders.

“Hajime,” he correct without any real force.

Tooru blinks again, and his eyes are clearer this time. Hajime helps him as he tries to sit up, careful not to touch his bare skin, untangling long limbs from sheets.

Tooru shivers as his feet connect to the cold of the hardwood floor, rests his elbows on his thighs and his face in his hands, rubbing at the purple bruises beneath his eyes with long fingers.

Hajime waits.

“Iwa-chan,” he says again, and there’s a sharp jab to Hajime’s temple as his ears register the familiar pitch of that juvenile whine. It shouldn’t be a good sound, but it is, “I’m _hungry_.”

Hajime makes a show of crossing his arms and scowling, even as the tightness in his chest loosens with relief.

“Then get your ass up and get yourself some food.”

“Ah, wait, never mind, who are you again? I don’t think I remember this place. Don’t even know where the kitchen is!”

Hajime cuffs Tooru behind the head for that one, very gently, but Tooru still acts like he’s swung a baseball bat at him (which, alright, he actually did do _once_ when they were kids), yelping and ducking his head.

“That’s not funny, jack ass,” Hajime growls, walking over to the window. A thin sliver of light shines through the crack in the darkeners—it’s still morning, after all—and he parts them so the light shines in.

Tooru shrinks away from it even as he observes his long-time friend with calculating eyes—even with his mental facilities dulled, he can read the tension in Hajime’s shoulders, the lines of stress carved into his face.

“Sorry, Hajime,” he says quietly, a softer smile in his voice, “Didn’t mean to make you worry.”

Hajime is rummaging through one of their shared dressers, finding a pair of ivory gloves. He manages to school his expression while he has his back turned, taking a deep breath before he turned to frown at the taller man. He tosses the gloves at Tooru, who blinks at the oncoming projectiles but is too slow to catch them. They smack against his chest and fall into his lap before he even gets his hands up. Hajime has to force the concern from his eyes.

“Who’s worried? Everyone knows idiots are invulnerable.”

“Mean, Iwa-chan.”

“There’s curry on the stove.”

Tooru perks up at this, his stomach growling loudly at the prospect of food, and he frowns as it as though it offended him. Giving into his hunger, however, he grabs the gloves in one hand and carefully stands, bracing his hand on the night stand in case his body decided to rebel. Hajime, arms crossed, watches to make sure he doesn’t topple over, before leaving the room. Tooru follows, brushing his hand through his greasy  hair. He grimaces.

“How long was I. . .?”

“More than twenty hours.”

Tooru frowns, staring hard at the table as he sits. Hajime goes to the stove, scooping out a hearty amount of curry and rice from the pots before turning to place them before his flatmate. Without a word, Tooru slips on the gloves and picks up a spoon, mumbles a half-hearted blessing, and begins to eat.

He forces himself to eat slowly, focusing on that rather than the absurd amount of time it had taken him to recover from using his powers the previous day. He had only extracted from one person, and yet it had taken him nearly a whole day to recover.

And his mind is still fuzzy—as he looks around the apartment, he finds that everything still registers to him as new—he can’t quite remember where this place— _home?_ —is and he  expects a battered couch to be tucked in the far corner where an armchair sits instead— _who on earth chose such an ugly color? A window was supposed to be to the left of it, overlooking a fruit stand run by his aunt_ —no, uncle. _No, aunt?_ Wait, they live in Miyagi—

He blinks rapidly, looking down to his hands, expecting to see thick, short fingers but instead sees long, slender ones. He is startled to see brown eyes in his reflection on the silverware instead of grey. He blinks at his arms, for several moments unable to comprehend that they are _his_ arms and not someone else's— _who's body is this?_

Unconsciously, his fingers clench around the spoon, too long to be his silverware—or maybe not? _His brother chose it, he recalls_. He doesn’t have a brother—

“Kuroo called. He says that he needs me to take care of something.”

“Another favor? Tetsu-chan should learn to manage his debt better,” Tooru scoffs, relieved to know that it wasn’t him that was needed and thankful that the name registers, solidifying his mind into what must be his own identity.

Hajime’s mouth quirks up in humor.

“All Kuroo told me is that the team he hired last night ran into some trouble. I’m assuming it was an infiltration at one of the bases. The information you gathered seems to be accurate, since NORM’s got all of their systems so well protected. Apparently, now they’ve even got the smaller mainframes equipt to combat technopaths trying to hack. They’re hiding something big.”

Tooru’s eyes widened in concern.

“Is Kenma alright?”

Hajime sighs, rubbing at his forehead.

“I think so— It sounds like they just have a massive migraine, but I don’t know how something like a shock to your neuro-synapses affects you extrasensory types, let alone a true technopath,” Hajime clicks his tongue in irritation, throwing a glare at Tooru like it’s _his_ fault, “You’re all too neurologically different from one another for me to guess, and for all the scary shit your brains can do, for some reason they’re always, _always_ a pain in the ass to fix when they get fucked up,” Hajime’s mouth twists as though in disgust, “Especially yours, Assikawa.”

Hajime ignores Tooru’s indignant squawk as he continues, “Kuroo says Kenma's headache keeps getting worse, so he called me. He’s going to pay me, so it’s technically not a favor.”

Tooru snorts at that one.

“We both know you’re not going to accept the money, Iwa-chan.”

Hajime couldn’t deny that, so he kept silent. Tooru bit his lip, thinking.  
  
“Did they mangage to get what they were looking for?”

Hajime shrugged, “All Kuroo said was that they had a backup plan—I think Akaashi is supposed to be getting the information now, wherever it is.”

Tooru hums in thought.

“Are you going over there now?”

“Some kind of high security alert just ended, so I’m going to wait.”

The words make Tooru tense up, even though they shouldn’t anymore— _where’s his gear? He needs his suit, he’s needed in his unit_ —no, he’s not in a unit anymore.

“What kind of alert?” he can’t keep himself from blurting out.

“Something going on down in the Shimizu Tech area. The news report said that two mutants were spotted—”

Tooru takes a deep breath, willing his heart to stop pounding, he digs his fingers into the skin of his left thigh, staring at his current spoonful of curry— _curry? He hates curry, ever since that time when he was thirteen and his father had cooked it with rancid meat_ —Impossible, he wasn’t living at home when he was thirteen. He’d been in training since he and Hajime were drafted into NORM at twelve— _he went willingly, he wanted to be a hero, he wanted to wipe the streets clean, clean of vile, unnatural, dangerous mu_ —he’ll never be clean, even though he gave everything _, everything_ , because they had told him it would make him strong, make him useful, make him _not a_ _monster_ —

“Tooru.”

He jumps, eyes flicking up to meet Hajime’s dark green irises, which have gone sharp with concern, searching. Tooru looks away, takes another bite of the curry and wills himself to stop the mild tremble of his hands. He can tell Hajime wants to say something, but they both know there’s nothing to be said, and nothing Tooru is willing to admit. After a few moments of tense silence, Hajime begins to speak again, and Tooru is thankful for it.

“I’m going to be leaving in an hour. Think you can keep yourself alive while I’m gone?”

Tooru’s mind freezes for a moment—alone, in the familiar yet strange house, with nothing to ground him in his reality?

“Of course I’ll be coming with you,” he scoffs, hoping Hajime can’t hear the tremble in his voice.

A scowl is thrown his way, half-concerned, half-irritated.

“Seriously? You think you’re up to come along even though you’ve been more-or-less comatose for the past twenty hours?”

“Well, I’m _really_ well-rested now.”

 “And _really_ stupid, apparently.”

“Boooring, Iwa-chan. You should come up with new insults.”

“Stupid describes you well enough,” was the gruff response.

 Tooru sticks his tongue out at him.  He drops his spoon in his bowl, pushing himself away from the table before standing. He’s all too aware how his friend watches him, green-flecked eyes following his every move, looking for something wrong—always looking for something to fix.  Tooru hated it at the same time that he was grateful for it, even when he craved the attention. He hated needing to be fixed.

The brunette suddenly has the need to get away from the ever-present worry in the familiar gaze, even though he knows it’s well-deserved. He was a bit of a mess, all things considered. Still is, if he were honest with himself.

“Aha, well, I need to shower first of course,” he says in a rush, careful not to meet Hajime gaze as he crosses the room.

“Don’t take too long.”

“I _won’t_. Ken-chan needs us, after all!” he chirps with false cheer as he makes his way to the hallway.

He balks, faced with three doors on this hallway, a feeling of déjà vu and confusion sweeping over his thoughts. He’s suddenly unable to remember the layout of his own home, his mind awhirl with images of similar, yet distinctly different hallways.

Right to left—is it bathroom, bedroom then closet? _No, it’s closet, bathroom then bedroom. He needs his robe_ —he doesn’t own a robe— _but oh, he’s forgotten to wash it. And he never did get more shampoo—he never made it to the store because he’d been called into duty so suddenly—the kids were so disappointed because he’d promised them he’d be free to take them to the movies—_ shut up, _shut up_ , he doesn’t _care_ , it doesn’t _matter_ anymore.  They’re dead. That person will be replaced by someone equally as able to kill mutants in their stead. Everyone gets to forget that faceless NORM officer who’d vanished two nights ago, stolen by the shadows.

Everyone gets to forget, except Tooru. He gets to remember their face, their thoughts, their feelings and dreams, their face, and family, and friends, and lovers. Their _life_. 

He gets to know what it is to _be_ them, even as he’s killing them.

Tooru viciously forces these thoughts away, dulls them to whispers in the back of his mind, as Hajime continues to talk behind him.

“You mean he needs _me_. You shouldn’t even be coming,” Hajime is saying, when he notices Tooru standing deathly still, back facing him. He watches, falling silent as Tooru’s body shifts hesitantly, taking a tentative step to the second door on the right, pauses, reaches out with his fingers.

“Tooru,” Hajime says, quietly, watching as his friend flinches like he’s been caught in a lie.

 Hajime hesitates, knowing that it would be safest to force Tooru to stay in the apartment, knowing that the dissociative episodes are at their worst in the first day after recovery, knowing that he’s in a vulnerable state. Hajime could do it easily—he could purposely force Tooru back to sleep, could even disable certain nerves to keep him immobile if he wanted to.

But he won’t break Tooru’s trust like that.

“The bathroom is on your right,” he mutters, looking away. All he gets is nod, before the clairsentient disappears into the bathroom.

Hajime sags against the counter.

Not for the first time, he wonders if he would ever be enough to save Tooru from himself.

 

* * *

 

Daichi is convinced that Noya and Tanaka are really just trying to kill him, that this whole situation had just been an elaborate ploy to get him alone (and now Yui by association) and force him to succumb to their criminal ways, when Nishinoya tells Yui to pull into a lot behind an abandoned building, out of site from the road. All of the windows are covered by warped planks of wood, the ground littered with countless shards of shattered glass. Even though the area looks abandoned, Daichi can sense the thrum of energy, like he’s surrounded by people even though he can’t see any of them, and he decides that he won’t give into curiosity and feel around for individuals.  He has the feeling that the less he knows, the safer he is.

Yui, however, doesn’t share this feeling.  
  
“Good. We’ve brought them here, now we can leave,” he had said, excited, _so_ excited to go home and leave this nightmare behind him forever.

“No, no, I want to see this through till the end, Daichi!” Yui had whined, unbuckling her seat belt.

Tanaka and Nishinoya have already hopped out of the back seat, but Nishinoya pops his head back in when he hears Yui.

“If you want to come, I’ve got no problem—just don’t blame us if something happens!”

Daichi looks desperately at Yui, beseeching.

“Yui. No. We are staying in this car.”

Yui opens the door.

“Oh, c’mon Dai-dai, where’s your sense of adventure?”

“Yeah, Dai-dai, where’s your— ack! _Woah!_ ”

 “You realize this is the definition of a really fucking bad idea, right Yui? You aren’t actually going to get out of this car. . .”

Yui gets out of the car.

 “Is it alright if I leave my car here?” She asks the other two mutants.

“That’s what you’re more concerned about?!”

Tanaka is poking at the tendril of energy that’s keeping Nishinoya suspended in the air by the ankle—marveling as it twists around his fingers, just barely visible, a slight quivering of the air. It sort of makes Daichi want to sneeze.

“It should be fine. People know us around here, so no one should bother your car. Probably.”

_That is not comforting._

“See, Daichi? It’s all good!”

“I’m not worried about the _car_ , Yui,” he hisses.

Yui huffs at him, crossing her arms. Daichi is used to this particular look and instantly knows that he doesn’t have a chance in hell of winning this argument.

“Stay here if you want, but I’m going with them!”

The ergokinetic grits his teeth in frustration, only heightened by Nishinoya’s excited cooing from where he’s hanging outside the car. He seriously considers flinging him into a building.

 Yui continues to stare him down, and he glares back despite knowing that it’s a losing battle.

“Don’t worry! She’s totally safe with us!” Tanaka says, while trying to set Daichi’s energy on fire. Which sort of tickles.

“Oi, oi, Daichi, this is so cool! How high could you lift me? I wanna fly!”

 Daichi groans.

Yui beams as he reluctantly unbuckles his seatbelt, grumbling about how he _really_ needs new, sane friends. Yui punches him in the shoulder in a way that’s meant to appear comforting, but is actually just painful.

“There, there. Think of this as my payment for this very big favor you asked of me at the ass-crack of dawn!”

Nishinoya grins, still upside-down, “I like her.”

Daichi drops him.

Much to his alarm, and more than a little irritation, Nishinoya pops out of existence before he hits the ground, only to reappears next to Tanaka in the same instant, upright. Tanaka is unphased, looking more disappointed that Daichi’s energy had dissipated. Daichi blinks, and Yui’s mouth opens into an ‘O’.

Well, that explains a lot.

Nishinoya grins at their faces, puffing out his chest and pointing off into the distance.

“Right this way, friends” Daichi grimaces at the word, “and be prepared to be amazed by our Super Secret Layer!”

“It’s not ours, though.”

“Shh, Ryuu.”

Yui follows without hesitation as the duo as they make their way behind one of the buildings, and Daichi follows in suit, brown eyes shifting around to watch for any danger.

They approach a building that Daichi is fairly certain is an old church—he’s not seen one in years, and this one looks more than  a little worse-for-wear, with broken stained-glass windows and charred walls. He’s a little concerned that the roof is going to cave in.

Yui, however, seems thrilled with it, striding after the two troublemaking mutants without an ounce of hesitation—he wonders, not for the first time, if Yui’s special brand of fearlessness is some sort of mutation in itself.

He follows behind her as they enter the building, nose wrinkling at the sheer amount of dust heavy in the air. They’re led down the aisle, weaving around crumbling pews. Yui looks around with a soft noise of interest, and Daichi thinks that she’s going to trip over something more than once, half-hoping that she does out of pure spite.

Tanaka and Nishinoya lead them beyond the alter, the latter prying open an old door on the back wall and the former allowing his right fist to go up in flames. Tanaka lights the way as the group descends the dark set of stairs beyond. Daichi, when they finally reach the bottom, is so on-edge that he feels like he might snap in half—especially when he instinctively reaches out with his powers and feels the presence of four others already in the room with them. The room is extremely dark, unnaturally dark, and it’s disconcerting how Daichi’s eyes can’t adjust to it. He tries to make up for what he can’t see for what he can feel, tentatively reaching out with thin coils of energy.

There’s a spot in the far corner of the room, Daichi feels, that is absolutely _buzzing_ —what he senses feels like the wafting warmth of a fireplace, yet has the presence of an unyielding ocean. The college student has never felt anything quite like it, and he unconsciously fixates on it, prodding at the pocket of energy when suddenly, he feels a sharp sting.

He yelps at the startling sensation, as the tips of the strands are literally sliced off. Instantly, the coils dissipate as he begins to wildly look around the dark room. He can feel Yui beside him tense with alarm.

“Your poking was annoying—keep your powers to yourself.”

Daichi glances at Tanaka, who is waving his flaming fist around like he’s trying to see better, brows furrowed in irritation when the room refuses to lighten no matter how much brighter his fire burns.

“Can you blame him? It’s too damn dark to see in here ‘cause _someone’s_ got a Blanket on the room.”

From across the room, Daichi hears snicker.

“Aw, is someone afraid of the dark?”

 “Don’t be an ass. Kenma’s asleep now, so the light won’t bother them anymore,” comes the earlier voice, gruff and irritated.

“And I’m tired of sitting in the dark,” a voice, coming from the same side of the room, whines in agreement.

The darkness seems to melt into the floor, collapsing into a puddle that slinks away back into the crevices of the room where they naturally belongs.

Blinking, Daichi’s eyes struggle to adjust to the fact that he can suddenly see, and he has to blink several times before he looks around the room.

In the corner, he sees three people—one of which is laid out on a ratty mattress and appears to be asleep—not dead, for how Daichi can sense their energy crackle oddly—with messy dyed-blonde hair and a slight frame. Hovering over the sleeping figure is a man with black hair and a stony face that appears to still be focusing on whatever his task at hand is, one hand resting on the sleeping figure’s forehead. The hand faintly glows, and Daichi is momentarily surprised by it, recognizing the man as the one with the interesting energy from before. He’s never met another energy-user before, and part of him feels a sense of kinship with the stranger.

Sitting in a chair slightly behind the other energy-user, is another man, with stylish brown hair and brown eyes that have zeroed in on the newcomers. No, he’s staring at _Daichi,_ like he knows him from somewhere, even though Daichi is sure that he's never seen the man in his life. For a moment, all the college student can do is stare back, despite how it makes his spine crawl.  All the while, the other man remains completely still, unblinking. It’s entirely unnerving, even more so when Daichi feels just how still the man’s energy is. Quiet, yet anything but calm. More like the stillness of a predator waiting to pounce.

Daichi looks away, and immediately wishes he didn’t.

His blood runs cold with dread—the energy across the room suddenly feels terribly familiar, flowing like cool, liquid metal.

Dark gold eyes lock onto his, and Daichi feels a little annoyed, mostly horrified as a smirk slides up the side of a face that’s miraculously not-bruised and adorned with a straight, not-broken nose.

 “Oh hoho?”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notice: If it's become difficult to keep up with the powers, or if you want some clarification, I've made a list of them! It's under the series The Sickness in Our Blood!  
> \-----
> 
> Hello, lovelies! 
> 
> I am so, so sorry for the wait. Honestly most of this has been written for months now, but when I got back to college things got kind of rough. And there was one scene that just really didn't want to be written BUT we're here now! I made it longer than the previous chapters, so hopefully it makes up for the wait at least a little 〃ﾟдﾟ〃! 
> 
> The plot is thickening, so that's exciting! Stay tuned for next chapter, where things will get a little more shippy. Yay! (〃・ω・〃）
> 
> Side note: I will be making a list of characters and their powers (at least ones which I feel I have made clear) when I have some time to spare. It'll be updated as I introduce characters, so be on the lookout for that!
> 
> Please, let me know what you think, point out typos, ask questions, give constructive criticism, anything at all! If you dont want to do that here, though, shoot me a message at kurly-q.tumblr.com !
> 
> Thank you all for your patience,
> 
> -Kurly


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